Sallyacious

« Would It Be So Wrong? | Main | Final Word on the Chocolate Bread Pudding? »

December 30, 2008

Boy Does It Smelly Yummy in Here

I just made a chocolate bread pudding. It's baking. I used up the leftover french bread from the french toast we had on Sunday morning.

This year (2008) marks a move to more cooking for me. It's partly due to being tired of eating the same old stuff all the time, thanks to being in a small town with a HIGHLY limited restaurant selection, partly due to the various economic woes that are wracking the country (Dave and I are fine, economically speaking, but I've been wanting to cut back on our dining out bills for sometime anyway, and now seems like an especially good time). It's also due in large part to having time and an increased sense of confidence in the kitchen. Quite frankly, I don't know where that last came from.

At the top of the list of reasons I've been cooking more, though, comes the desire to go back to my dairy-free lifestyle. You see, I'm allergic to dairy products (that doesn't include eggs, by the way, cows don't lay eggs). Ever since I figured out that dairy products are at the root of my asthma attacks, I've tried to avoid them when I get colds and also when I'm in shows. There's no sense in making things harder for myself than they have to be, after all. But it's really hard to be dairy-free here when our schedules force us to eat out a lot, and since we moved here, our schedules have been like that. Given that it's a college town, and a small town, there just aren't a lot of non-dairy options. So I've had a lot of cheese over the past five years.

But it's just silly to be forcing my body to cope with an allergen all the time, and I think that maybe my low energy levels might partly be due to that. I know I can cut out dairy just not eating it, but that really limits me when it comes to cooking. Because of all the things (like bread pudding and chicken pot pie) that I cannot have. And then yesterday, I did a little research. And I discovered that Silk soy milk can replace milk in any recipe.

So last night we had amazing chicken pot pie from this recipe, only using broccoli instead of onions (because Dave doesn't like onions), without the fresh thyme because the store was out, and with Silk soy creamer instead of half and half. Also, crescent roll dough instead of pie crust because we didn't have enough butter to make pie crust and I forgot to thaw the fillo dough. And with the addtion of frozen corn. Anyway, it was A. Maz. Ing. (It was also very good for lunch today. That recipe makes A LOT of chicken pot pie.)

And then today, I exchanged the milk in this recipe for one cup of chocolate Silk and one cup of plain Silk and made bread pudding. I also used a lot more bread than she calls for in the recipe, closer to a pound, because 4 oz isn't very much bread, at least not the way they make it at our co-op. I cannot tell you how very very good this house smells right now, with the chocolate bread pudding baking away in the oven. Oh. My. God. So. Good. (Though I wish now I'd added a little bit of cinnamon to the mixture. That would have been a nice touch.)

Anyway, it turns out Silk really does work nicely as a substitute for milk, and now that I know that, I will be doing a lot more cooking of a lot more things. There are only a couple of things to remember about it. It curdles when it boils, so don't boil it. And it won't whip up like a heavy cream because it doesn't have the right kind of fat. But I can figure something else out if I ever need whipped cream, and in the meantime, I can have good food and a dairy-free life again, without giving up anything except cheese*.

It's almost done, another five minutes or so. It smells like brownies. I'll let you know how it turns out.

*(Sigh.) That's actually quite a sacrifice, because I love cheese, and there is nothing that works like it does on a pizza or in deep fried mozzarella sticks or in an omlette. I just have to not have it. Period. Sad, but true.

Posted by sally at December 30, 2008 03:14 PM

Comments

Posted by: Vicki at December 30, 2008 07:06 PM

©2006 - All content copyright Sally Eames-Harlan unless otherwise noted