Not-from-a-cow Products

So, since I mentioned that there are lots of good replacements for dairy products out there, I thought I should list a few that I like to use. And easy thing to remember when shopping for non-dairy items is "vegan". Anything labelled as vegan should contain no animal products, therefore, no dairy! Yay!

These are by no means the only ones out there or the best or whatever. And not all of them are vegan, so read the labels for yourselves when you're shopping. These companies have not paid me to say this. In fact, I doubt that they will ever even read this. That being said, these products, in no particular order, are my family's favorite items:
SoyaKaas Soy Cheese (Mozzarella and Monterrey Jack are our faves. They both melt very nicely.) I just found out this contains casein, milk protein. It IS lactose free though.
Rice Dream rice milk (vanilla or original, I'm very disappointed that there isn't an organic vanilla one)
Silk vanilla (the little single serving ones fit very nicely in sippy cups for road trips)
Organic Great Value soy milk (I use it mostly for cooking and it works just fine)
Silk soy yogurt (vanilla for eating, original for cooking)
O'Soy yogurt, strawberry and peach (these are a huge hit with Nadia)
SoDelicious soy "ice cream" (one of the best soy ice creams I've tried)
Coconut Bliss "ice cream" (I had to start making my own ice cream because this one was so good I couldn't afford to keep buying it!)
Tofutti Better than Cream Cheese
Tofutti Better than Sour Cream
SoyaToo Soy Whip (like whipped cream)
Better Life Buttery Spread and Baking Sticks
Earth Balance vegan baking sticks (these are my fave)
Smart Balance Light (the one that says "vegan" on the side)
EnjoyLife semi-sweet chocolate chips (Holy monkeys, these things are AWESOME! I LOOOOOOOOVE them! I often feel the need to eat the entire bag at once. Ricky agrees that they are better than regular chocolate chips.)

Also, several of the Duncan Hines cake mixes and frostings are dairy-free (Devil's Food cake and Fluffy White and Chocolate frostings for sure). You just need to check the labels, because it's definitely not all of them. I haven't found ANY Pillsbury or Betty Crocker ones that are ok for us.

Anyway, hopefully this handy little list can help with some of the shopping needs. Maybe I'll remember I put it here next time we go visit someone so I don't have to rummage through the fridge looking for packages so I know what I buy.

Creamy Red Chard Linguine

Channing and I (mostly Channing, I just chopped) made this when we were at Leslie's house, and it was delicious! Nadia liked the noodles, and I think everyone else liked all of it. I think we used rainbow chard, but otherwise pretty much exactly followed the recipe from Post-Punk Kitchen. Post-Punk Kitchen is a really good resource for vegan recipes. It's the blog of Isa Chandra Moskowitz, who has a few cookbooks out. Veganomicon is one that I really like for general meal-cooking, and she also has several others that I haven't looked into. I try to find vegan recipes as often as possible, because I feel like it's important to not always eat things that are covered with cheese. You know, for health.

Leslie suggested that maybe this could be paleo-ok if you used spaghetti squash instead of pasta, but it does have a little bit of wine in it. Is that cavechef approved?

Applesauce

Ok, so I feel like I'm kind of cheating by posting this as a recipe, but it's good. And it requires a little prep work, and, honestly, it's the only thing I had made recently that I knew actual amounts of anything that was in it and could get a picture of the finished product. I got the "recipe" from a few friends. It's so easy the cat could make it (well, if he would pry his butt off the couch and quit whining that someone looked at him funny). The awesome thing about this, I've found, is that it's REALLY hard to mess it up. For proof, read past the recipe.

Ingredients:

10 apples (I've been using organic Gala apples)

1. Core apples and cut into eighths (not sure how necessary that is, but my corer cuts them for me, so it's one easy step and I figure they'll cook faster, so I'm all for it).

2. Place in stock pot.

3. Cook over low heat for 4-6 hours (or more) until apples get mushy when you stir them. Stir every 30 minutes or so in the beginning, until they begin to release some of their juice, so they don't stick to the bottom and burn.

4. Put contents of pot into blender or food processor and puree.

5. Eat some before the kids devour it all. It makes approximately 24 ounces. According to the little measurement line on my tupperware bowl.

The first time I did this, I used apples that we had had for weeks. Seriously, they were almost going bad. And it was SOOOOOOOOO good. It was really sweet and tasted like it had cinnamon in it and everything. Ask mom, she had some. The second time, I did not stir the apples for almost an hour and a half because I forgot they were cooking. So when I did, all the apples on the bottom were burned. Great, just wasted all those apples, right? Nope! The sauce came out really dark and had a very different flavor. I thought it kind of tasted like sweet potatoes. Ricky thought it tasted like guava candy from Guatemala. Emily had some of that batch. The third batch had no problems and was not nearly as good as the first two, but it's still good and the kids love it.

Kale and Grilled Cheese with Red Peppers

This is a fairly typical meal in our house. Except for the fact that it's being stalked from the next room by a small kitten. Usually the kitten is closer.

Anyway, it's typical because it's really easy. Here's what you need:
For the kale:
1 bunch of kale (we used dinosaur kale this time)
1 T (approximately) sesame oil or whatever oil you like for frying stuff
1 small onion or shallot

For the sandwiches:
4 slices of bread (ours is California Black Bread, but anything will work)
a few slices each of Pepper jack and Meunster cheese (or whatever kind you like, just make sure you have enough to make two thin layers on each sandwich)
1 small red bell pepper
A little butter

To make the kale, first wash it and separate the leaves from the stems. Remove any gross-looking woody parts from the bottoms of the stems and discard. Chop the stems into smallish pieces (about 1/2 - 1 inch) and roughly chop the leaves, keeping them separate. Thinly slice the onion or shallot. Heat the oil (we use sesame for frying because it splatters a lot less than olive oil) in a large saucepan. When it's medium-hot add in the stems and thinly sliced onion or shallot. Stir until slightly softened, about 3-5 minutes. Then add in the kale leaves and stir. Once the leaves shrink down a little bit, add a few tablespoons of water and cover for another 3-5 minutes until the water is cooked away. The longer kale cooks, the softer it gets, so take it off when it tastes good to you. 

The sandwiches are really easy if you've ever made grilled cheese. You just do the same thing but put a layer of thinly sliced red peppers in the middle of two layers of cheese. I always butter the outside of the sandwiches but not the part next to the cheese, because cheese is going to stick to bread no problem anyway. So just put those in the pan on medium-low heat until the cheese starts to get melty. Flip them over and they're done whenever the bottom bread is toasty and all the cheese is melted. If you don't have enough cheese they fall apart, so don't be too stingy there. You can also skip the butter and make these in the oven or toaster oven, open-face style. I cut ours double ding-dong style (four triangles) so the peppers wouldn't slide out during the eating.

And that's it!

You could easily make this dairy-free by using soy cheese and margarine in place of cheese and butter. I'm not sure how to make it paleo since I'm still not totally sure what is and isn't paleo, but maybe the kale would be ok?

Introducing Carole (the Paleo one)

I have never enjoyed cooking. Ever. In my entire life. I wasn’t allowed to “help” in the kitchen when I was a kid and basically learned that it was a place to be avoided at all costs. I eventually taught myself how to cook, but I never enjoyed it. Having picky kids
to cook for didn’t give me much encouragement to experiment, either. But we all had to eat something, so I did my best. Sometimes it meant losing wooden spoons to the blender or cutting burnt bottoms off of biscuits, but no one went hungry.

When Leslie was in college, she got an advertisement in the mail for a marathon in Ireland. I called her and asked if she wanted it. She said no, but I decided to look into it. It turned out that it was for a fundraising team that would help train you for the marathon if you met fundraising goals for the team. Anyway, months later, after training like a mad woman (I had never been a runner before, after all) I found myself in Ireland running my first marathon ever. I finished it, by the way.

Since then I’ve been running like crazy and trying to get in the best shape that I can. I have really enjoyed this new chapter in my life and want to eat foods that help me to feel my best and let my body work efficiently to maintain all the hard work I've put in over the last few years. That led me to the Paleo diet. The Paleo diet is a high animal protein, low refined/processed food diet. What that means for me is eating a lot of meat and fruits and veggies, no grains, no beans, no sugar, no dairy, and (unfortunately)no compatible meals with my daughters. Or very few anyway. It’s a huge challenge to plan a menu for any time that we are all together. Hopefully by compiling all our favorite recipes here, we will be able to find some meals that we can all sit down and enjoy together.

Luckily the girls will voluntarily consume foods other than plain white rice and boiled chicken these days.

Pink Stuff

PINK STUFF (Sweetheart Salad) Totally not Paleo but completely meat free
2 Cups Crushed pineapple
1/2 Cup sugar
1 1/2 T granulated geletin (Knox about 1 1/2 packets)
1//4 Cup cold water
2T lemon juice
2T marichino cherry juice
6 oz creme cheeze (2 small packages)
12 marichino cherries
1/2 pt Cool whip

Heat pineapple with sugar, add geletin which has been softened in 1/4 C cold water. Stir till melted. Add lemon and cherry juice and cool. Mash creme cheese--add cherries which have been chopped fine. Mix with pineapple and chill till slightly thickened. Blend Cool whip with pineapple mixture. Mold and chill.