A Dairy Free Guide

I've been wanting to write this post for a while now, and I'm finally getting around to it. It really has nothing to do with photography, but I just wanted to put it out there as a future reference for me, or anybody else that might need it.

When I first started to cut out dairy (because my little girl could NOT handle it while breastfeeding for the first 6 months of her life) I had a really hard time adjusting. I realized that we were a huge dairy family. Practically half, if not more, of my dinner recipes involved milk or cheese. I bought a 5 lb bag of cheese every month and went through the whole thing in a month, if not quicker. I ate ranch and sour cream like it was water. Not really, but I couldn't live without them being constantly in my fridge. What more is there to life without dairy, right?

Ha ha! Wow, I'm really glad that my sweet little girl made me change my diet so I was dairy free. Don't get me wrong, dairy is not bad. Just excessive amounts of dairy, like I was going through, probably isn't the healthiest. It has fat and cholesterol in it, which isn't that great. Plus, I can get my calcium through other sources of food.

Now that I can finally eat dairy again I've realized that I don't need ranch and sour cream to live. Actually I still haven't bought any and I probably won't. I found other things that I like better. And those "cream of __________" soups I will most likely never buy again.  If a recipe calls for it, I just won't make it.

However, I will still buy and eat cheese. That was the number one thing I missed. But I don't think I'll be using it as often as I was before.

When I researched dairy free foods, a lot of lists popped up, but they were also lists that contained gluten free or soy free foods as well. And I didn't want gluten or soy free - just dairy free. So here is a list of just dairy free foods - purely for the sake of anyone who has to cut it out due to breastfeeding.

• Mayo - a lot of people think there is dairy in mayo. Nope! It's mainly eggs and oils.
• Almond milk - anything that called for milk I replaced with almond milk. It's quite good cooked into things. I don't really like it plain, but as a substitute for recipes with milk, sure! 
• Candy - candy without chocolate does not have dairy in it. That's how I got my "sweet tooth" fix
• Raspberry Vinaigrette - so good on salad! I don't need ranch anymore. And it's much healthier.
• Poppyseed dressing- Not just any poppyseed dressing. "Briannas" brand, as the picture shows. It is so good! This is not healthy. It has just as much fat and calories as ranch, but it's dairy free! :) And it's like putting sugar on your salad. YUM!
• Meat with a side dish, like potatoes, fries, rice, etc.- We ate a lot of plain seasoned chicken.
• Broth based soups - Such as chicken noodle, chicken and blackbean type soups. I have some good recipes I'll put at the bottom of this post. 
• Oatmeal - this was almost a staple for my breakfast. And I put the vanilla almondmilk in it and it gave it a nutty flavor. So good!
• Eggs - no, eggs are not dairy. I seriously had quite a few people ask me if I could eat eggs. They aren't dairy.
• Earth Balance, Smart Balance and Blue Bonnet Light Butter. - I was and still am a huge butter person. I ate toast a lot, with butter, so to not have actual butter was really hard for me, until I found those brands mention above. And margarine has dairy in it, just in case you wanted to know. Make sure to read the label, though. There are smart balance and earth balance brands that have dairy in them. It will say "vegan" on the box, so you know it's dairy free. And they aren't too bad.
• They do have dairy free ice cream. They are just WAY expensive. I'm talking 6 bucks for a ben and jerry size container.
• Oreos - There are no cookies that don't have milk ingredients in them, except for oreos. I think they might have become my favorite store bought cookie. 
• Frozen sugar cookie dough - like pillsbury cookie dough. It's not as easily ready as buying a package of cookies, but it's a quick fix as opposed to making your own.
• Coconut Oil. This stuff is way expensive, but you can use it as replacement for butter. It's also really healthy for you and benefits other stuff, too. 
• Kabobs with veggies
• Chef salad with above mentioned dressings
• Pasta with red sauce - we ate a lot of spaghetti, or chicken Parmesan. Minus the parmesan for me.
• Great Grains whole wheat Bakery Bread - You have to be careful with bread. Some have milk, some don't. Luckily this brand did not, and we were buying that anyway. However I did notice that white bread contained milk a lot more often than wheat bread. But I love wheat bread, so this wasn't a problem for me.
• Homemade pizza - I made mine without cheese and it was still really good. And if you want to go "out" for pizza, Papa Murphy's can make you a pizza without cheese. But that's a little overpriced for pizza without cheese, if you ask me. And no, they won't make the $5 pizza's without cheese. Lame, right?
• Lots of veggies and fruit
• Chicken nuggets
• French fries
• Cake - store bought brands like Betty Crocker or Duncan Hines have no milk in their yellow or white cake mixes. I didn't check the other flavors, so they might. Who knows.
• Frosting - storebought ones that aren't cream cheese flavored
• Mashed potatoes - I used almond milk and vegan butter in them to mash
• Chinese food - The homemade kind. Usually chinese food recipes don't have dairy in them. Just soy and oil. So I made sweet and sour chicken over rice. Stuff like that. I don't know if the "out to eat" chinese food had dairy in it. I never asked.
• Pancake mix that is not Buttermilk flavor. I just assumed all pancake mix had dairy in it until I read the label. Who knew?
• Beans of any kind. Baked, pinto, refried, kidney, etc. Taco soup can be made with all those beans.
• Stir Fry
• Panda Express Madarin/ Orange Chicken Sauce - They sell the sauce at Winco. And it's an easy dairy free dinner that is tasty.
• Graham crackers - however, some are processed in a facility that also processes milk ingredients. Just check the label. But the off brand didn't have any milk in it.
• Toast with butter and Honey - When I was craving baked goods, which you can't eat any of them really, this curbed that craving. 
• PB&J 
• Tortillas - All the brands I saw (I didn't check all of them) didn't have milk in them
•  Burritos/Enchiladas - I just didn't put cheese on them and they still tasted good.
• Soy Cheese - I did try this once. Not my favorite, but it is out there if you want to try it. It's really expensive.
• Going out to eat - Ya, that's tough. We didn't really go out to eat very much because lots of places cook everything in butter. And you don't know if there's milk in it. However, that being said, I could eat hamburgers without cheese and she was just fine. Carl's Jr was our friend. ha ha! Or places that are "meat" places like a roadhouse or whatever. Just make sure to ask how they cook the meat.

Obviously the list goes on, right? There's plenty of recipes and food to get you started. Just goes to show you that you can change your diet, whether it's dairy free or whatever. There are foods out there. Just check the labels, and it might take a few weeks, but you'll get it down.

Here's a few yummy dairy free recipes - with a few modifications.

For these bacon wraps 2 chicken breasts were plenty. I think it's because they were pretty big pieces of chicken. 


 

Obviously the cream of broccoli is out of the question, but the other three are really good. 

Obviously, these cookies have dairy in them, but I made them with my almond milk and vegan butter and they tasted pretty good. I didn't know if using a different butter would affect cookies that you bake in the oven, so I didn't even try it.

And for this meatball recipe, you don't really have to put the milk in it. Or just use almond milk. It's just to make it more moist anyway.