I need help planning a dairy free menu for my family. I don't know why it seems difficult, but in the past we have eaten a lot of cheese, ice cream, etc.

I need inexpensive meals that my family will eat. We've been without dairy for almost a month, and as we are re-introducing it, things don't look promising (or they do, depending on one's perspective--I think intolerance may be at the root of some of our behavior issues).

Anyway, in the month we were off, we were eliminating other stuff too, which made for an unusual diet. Now I need to figure out how to eat normally again...

Favorites? Anything that works well with once-a-month cooking?

Tell me what you usually eat? There is so much variety in how families eat...

For Mexican type cooking, we use Tofutti brand sour cream...pretty good if cold out of the fridge. As it warms it tastes beanier (they use soy as a base instead of dairy). And/or we use avocado instead of cheese...that yummy fatty, rich flavor but no dairy.

If you make things like grilled cheese sandwiches, just make a grilled veggie sandwich instead, and use slices of lunch meat if you want (ie deli sliced turkey, cukes, tomatoes, and avocado would be good). We just have gone to sandwiches like that but without grilling them.

I'm trying to think of other things but we have been dairy and gluten free for so long it's hard for me to imagine what the heck people eat that has so much dairy in it to begin with, LOL!

If you usually put cream cheese on a bagel - switch to buttered English muffin (use Earth Balance as it is dairy free). If you usually top things with cheese, just leave it off or sub avocado if it sounds yummy.

Here are some of our typical meals:

Breakfast:
English muffins (for those who can eat gluten) w/Earth Balance
Egg sandwiches - we just leave off the cheese and have scrambled eggs on English muffins with bacon if we are feeling adventurous
Pancakes (there are DF mixes)
Banana muffins or other muffins (easy to make DF)

Lunch:
Sandwiches (see above)
Leftovers from dinner
Fresh salads with DF dressing

Snacks:
Fresh veggies w/dip
Popcorn
Fresh fruit
Fruit leather
Nuts
Trail mix
Raisins
Tamari roasted almonds
Hummus and chips
Salsa and chips
Smoothies made with frozen berries, juice and rice protein powder (also have these for breakfast a lot)

Dinner:
Any variation on meat, potato/starch, and veggie - very easy to adapt to DF by using Earth Balance or other DF margarine, Tofutti sour cream on the potatoes, etc
Mexican - burritos, tostadas, beans and rice - just use avocado and Tofutti sour cream instead of cheese
Spaghetti with sauce
Stews and soups

I'm not familiar with OAMC but when I looked into it, it leans heavily on casseroles, which may be why you are in dairy-cooking-mode, LOL. I hardly make casseroles or lasagna anymore - but TBH we never ate them that often anyway. You can do it without cheese but cheese is really the glue that holds many casseroles together.

HTH some! If you give me a "typical" menu of what you ate before these issues cropped up, I may be able to help more specifically.

I am with Lauren, if you give us some ideas of what you eat, we can give you hints on how to do them dairy free.

I don't know...we have made a big shift since going on the elimination diet, so maybe I'm doing better than I thought... I've been trying really hard to avoid heating my kitchen, so we've been grilling and crockpotting. I have been doing a lot of grilled chicken and burgers. Then we have done soups.

I've gotten used to fajitas without cheese and sour cream, so I don't mind. Thanks for the reminder about the avacados; that may help DH. I LOVE avocado!

Places we struggle are with cheese, and I haven't cared for any fake cheese stuff, so...We just have to find alternatives to quesadillas, pizza, etc.

Also, I've tried ricemilk for white sauce and just wasn't quite happy with it. In the winter, we do a lot of chicken pot pie, cassaroles, etc., and we'll just have to do more soups, and maybe shepard's pie with gravy rather than white sauce.

I've been making cashew milk that I really like, and I've made pudding pops for the kids with that and/or homemade rice or oatmilk and they didn't notice the difference. We all really like Earth Balance spreads and margarine. I use soy milk in cereal and occaisionally for cooking, but we don't really like the aftertaste.


Anyway, I'd love to hear more of a typical day of eating for you.

Almond Breeze is a good substitute. I find I can't taste it in most stuff. Coconut milk is good for creamy stuff but the coconut comes through so . . .

Pudding pops - Chocolate Silk makes the best fudgesicles.

Frontier has many gravies that are dairy-free (gluten-free too, Lauren).

Sub for pizza - nutritional yeast and red lentils. There is a recipe somewhere. It tastes pretty good and looks like melted cheese. I have heard shredded yellow squash is good too but I keep forgetting about trying it.

Typical day for us (we are gluten free too):

Breakfast:
Homemade pancakes (recipe in special needs section) with maple syrup or fried apples
Fried apples and sausage
scrambler (egg, sausage, grits or quoina, nutritional yeast (cheese for DH))
scrambled eggs and sausage or bacon
muffins and sausage (we eat a lot of sausage)

Lunch
sliced deli meat (watch ingredients) rolled around sweet pickles
sliced deli meat cubed with baby carrots or pickles
chicken salad
tuna salad
pancakes warmed, coated in pb and rolled up into logs
leftovers from supper
beanie weanie (baked beans with hotdogs slices in it)

Supper:
taco soup
chicken strips with dipping sauces like peanut ginger sauce, ketchup, honey mustard
veggies of all sorts
spaghetti sauce with variety of noodles
homemade hamburger helper without dairy and gluten
peas, noodles, marg and nutritional yeast
tacos (I mix hamburger, refried beans and salsa and serve with corn chips, onions, green peppers, black olives, etc.)
Fried chicken legs
meatballs and rice
chicken and rice
Sweet n Sour chicken
grilled chicken
steak and potatoes of some sort
did I mention lots of veggies

Snacks:
anything edible, my girls aren't picky
carrots and hummus
apples and pb
carrots and pb
muffins
chips
grapes
fruit in season

Basically, we just avoid meals that have what we can't eat for the most part. I have subbed some stuff just so I can deal with teaching them what they can and can't have that is common in society.

Giving up dairy was much harder (as in effort) than giving up meat. It was especially hard to be creative without cheese. I am getting used to it...

It was important to me after viewing the Peta films concerning the dairy/veal industry. I don't know why I was so dense as to not see the connection:
dairy=pregnant/nursing cows=calves=veal. So sad.

I also gave up eggs/egg products after seeing (in person) an "egg production" factory. It is chicken hell. And I am not kidding.

Blessed Be

Thank you! Any idea where I could find that pizza recipie? I don't think anyone will go for it right away, but maybe after being off dairy for awhile it will appeal??? DS said he thought we could make pizza with just sauce, so maybe that appeals to him; I have trouble with the idea, YK? And I have not liked any of the cheese subs I've tried in the past...

I can't find the one with lentils right now. But here is one:

SAUCE:
2 c. water
2/3 c. nutritional yeast flakes
2/3 c. extra-firm SILKEN tofu or medium-firm tofu
1/3 c. unbleached flour
1/4 c. cornstarch
2 T. light miso
2 tsp. lemon juice
1 vegetarian "chicken-style" bouillon cube (or enough for 1 c. liquid), crumbled
1/2-3/4 tsp. salt
1/2 tsp. EACH garlic granules, Hungarian paprika, dry mustard, and Tabasco sauce (or 1 tsp. vegetarian worcestershire sauce)
1/4 tsp. white pepper
2 more c. water
a few scrapings of freshly-ground nutmeg
OPTIONAL: For extra richness you can add 1-2 T. good-tasting dairy-free margarine (Earth Balance).
1 c. fresh breadcrumbs
paprika

I was just browsing at this forum, but we too have been gfcf (lax in the summer, but behavior is worse and need to go back) and I have created a cheese substitute for pizza that my kids like -- even the ones who are not gfcf outside the house and therefore occassionally eat regular pizza. I use a gfcf crust from the health food store. For the cheese sauce, I mix a can of white beans, a large spoonful of mayonaise and half a can of artichokes in the blender. Sometimes I add nutritional yeast too. The taste is quite good. It just isn't sticky.

Natalia