any advice, vegan friends?

it's officially over.

after a relationship that lasted years, through good times and hard times, dairy and i are no longer on good terms.

sad cheese

for the past few months, i have been trying to ignore my body's signals that dairy just isn't making me feel well, but it is so damn hard!!  i will shout it from the top of a mountain that ice cream, no matter what flavor, is my favorite food.  but it just doesn't make me feel well anymore.

i have been making a concerted effort to limit these things from my diet as much as i can (not necessarily from a moral stand, but for my health's sake), but sometimes i just slip and give in to my strong dairy cravings.  for example, last night, after dinner we went to the self-serve frozen yogurt joint, where i am always very judicious with my serving size.  i got the smallest dollop i could manage from the machine, yet in the middle of the night i woke up feeling horribly ill.  was it worth it?  that's the question i am asking myself now.

so, dairy free-friends, do you have any advice for a girl about to give up lactose cold-turkey? 

and, more importantly, is there life after cheese?

first soup of the fall: shiitake mushroom soup with quinoa, garlic, and kale

last weekend, jordan and i visited the kennett square mushroom festival, whose volunteers and mushroom experts reminded us of this (but just substitute "shrimp" with "mushroom").  we left with an armload of different varieties of mushrooms: shiitakes, crimini (or baby bellas...i had no idea they were the same thing!), portobello caps, even porcini mushroom pasta.

so with the cold weather that came upon us this week, we thought we would try our hand at using the mushrooms for a soup.  i have been trying to avoid dairy lately, so the standard, cream-based mushroom soup was not an option.  instead, we adapted a recipe we found from vegetarian times.  find the original recipe here.

we substituted quinoa for the wheat berries (as i am trying to avoid wheat as well, and we didn't have wheat berries in the pantry, just quinoa).  also, next time we make it i would add scallions to bring a little more green to the soup.

ingredients:

2 tbsp. olive oil
1 cup shiitake mushrooms, cleaned and sliced thin
1 cup quinoa
10 cloves garlic, peeled and sliced thin
1 medium bunch kale, washed, stems removed, and sliced on the bias
1/4 cup rice vinegar
4 cups low-sodium, MSG free vegetable broth (we use this to make our own broth; much more economical and eco-friendly than buying the cardboard quarts that end up going to waste!)


method:

cook quinoa according to package directions.  set aside.

heat olive oil in a saucepan.  saute the mushrooms for 10 minutes.  add the garlic and continue to saute an additional 2 minutes.  carefully add vinegar (the pan will be hot, so don't get splashed!) and continue to stir gently, scraping the bottom of the pan with a wooden spoon.

add broth to the saucepan, bring to a boil and then allow to simmer for 20 minutes.  stir in kale and allow to wilt.

to serve, ladle the soup into bowls and add the desired amount of quinoa to each bowl (this prevents the quinoa from getting soggy in the broth).

so simple!  enjoy!