Had a really nice time over the weekend. Got to walk in the woods twice, went shopping once and went out to eat two times. Paid a visit to the area that will hopefully become our future home and spent a lot of time just laughing and catching up. Going out to eat is something that we were doing once a week because of the time crunch with shopping. This time it was just to find very easy ways to get me walking more. Has to be a slow build- too much too soon will cause the muscles to spasm and potentially bring on a fall and re-injury. As much as I would love to do a couple of "push it till you puke" kind of build up sessions, it's just too risky. I ne3ver want to be this house bound for so long ever again !
There are two big hurdles with going dairy free and living the life of the average person- that being cheese and ice cream. When you go out to eat at most places, dishes include cheese more often than not. Cheese shreds on salads, topped with cheese sandwiches or omlettes or some kind of cream sauce. If you are avoiding nightshades, good luck finding a fast food sandwich that does not include tomatoes, tomato sauce or that is accompanied with fries, hash browns or other potato thing. They can be found, but you really have to read the menu carefully. Thankfully I can eat baked things that contain milk( bread or buns) and butter, but that is where it ends. One chain in the Midwest( Culver's) happily has side selections that are dairy free and on the menu. You can get a burger and sweet potato fries or seasoned green beans ( salads contain cheese and cole slaw contains milk so those are out). I decided to risk it Saturday and try a small dish of ice cream, just to see if it really is a problem, and sure enough it is. Sad thought, spending the rest of my life without frozen custard !
Which led to a sort of decadent but purposeful Sunday activity - the non dairy ice cream taste test. There are different times when you just want to have ice cream, and if you cannot eat regular ice cream, you kind of scratch your head. Not so very long ago there were no non dairy ice cream options in the regular stores. If you could not do dairy bu wanted a frozen treat, Popsicles were as good as it gets, or frozen bananas . They came Tofutti and soy milk ice creams , but now there are several new options.Problem is which one do you like the best? We had gone out for breakfast , which was large, and figured lunch would be just a nibble, and some how the subject of ice cream came up. I did not want to repeat the ill affects of Saturday, so a discussion led to the idea of buying one of each non dairy ice cream option, doing a taste test side by side and determining which one we liked the best. Here are the contenders , and the results- keep in mind we are people who tended to prefer gelatto over Ben and Jerry's before this.
Soy Dreams- YUCK !!! Soy ice cream and milk has a weird lemony, vanilla-ish overriding after taste that just makes my stomach flip. I have a problem with soy, so not surprising that I did not like it.
Coconut Dreams- nice taste, but a bit of a grainy mouth feel . The fat coats your mouth, but it seems to clear quicker than full fat dairy, leaving your mouth to say "wow ! ice cream !...wait a minute...". I would ea this one again , but I think it would be best in a chocolate flavor.
Rice Dreams - very pleasant , and very close to regular dairy ice cream in taste and mouth feel. This one was Nick's favorite.
Almond Dreams - my choice for the winner ! There was no difference in texture, taste, smell or flavor to dairy ice cream. I prefer almond milk over soy because the fat in the almonds mimics the fat in dairy nicely. Now if they could start making almond milk cheese ....
Diana's Bananas- the frozen chocolate covered banana on a stick- these I have loved since I was a kid , and if I feel an urge for something sweet, a banana will usually do it for me. Frozen , they work like ice cream because of the mouth feel. The guys were not crazy about these- sensitive teeth and frozen bananas do not mix.
So now we know what our go to frozen fun food will be. Wouldn't it be nice to solve all of the problems in the world in such a simple fashion ??
3 comments:
I love those Diana's Bananas! I had one last night! YUM!
We used to buy Rice Dreams ice cream bars for little daughter when she had food allergies. We really liked those, too!
If you can find it, there's a brand called So Delicious that makes AMAZING soy ice cream bars. They are only 100 calories and contain no dairy. YUMMY!
I've never tried any of these but think I'll look for them on my next grocery run!
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