Milk can cause so many problems
A friend lent me a great cook book called the Ultimate Uncheese Cookbook by Joanne Stepaniak. I read the foreword before even getting to the recipes after the subheading of Cheese and Politics caught my attention. Without rewriting the whole book, the cheese and milk industry is heavily supported and supplemented by our government. The government tells us milk not only tastes great but is necessary for our health (regardless of the known intolerance to lactose or toxicity of casein to our bodies). We have been hearing this since we were in the womb and the choice to consume milk and cheese, especially as presented in the food pyramid, need to be examined more closely. I am not here to provide all the nit and gritty details, just resources so here is an electronic version of this book for any interested in more Information.
I found the book to have some great ideas and alternatives to cheese and cannot wait to try them. Time has not been on my side lately and meals have been quick with no exciting pictures. In lieu, I am including some really cool recipe links that I cannot wait to try:
Aged Pine Nut Cheeze with Garlic and Rosemary
For those readers excited about alternatives to dairy cheese, please do not let ingredients you have not used before scare you. I stayed away from nutritional yeast for a while but it is now a favorite staple in my pantry. In fact, I could not make this awesome “Velveta” cheeze this evening because I ran out of nutritional yeast :(. Not to be confused with yeast used for baking, nutritional yeast is a nutritional supplement and flavor enhancer with vitamins! One brand which even packs a full B-vitamin punch is the Red Star brand. I bought my first batch at Follow Your Heart and now replenish the container at the bulk section from Whole Foods.
Another intimidating ingredient can be the “agar-agar.” This is just a sea vegetable used as a coagulant. It has minimal taste but once adding chopped ingredients to it after dissolving with hot water, it firms up very nicely in the fridge. My first experiment with this ingredient was making a sun-dried tomato cashew cheese from the burger recipe (even though I did not get to making the burgers, sadly.)
All this talk of cheeze and searching for recipes has prompted me to put a visual collection of cheese recipes together on my pinterest account. Check it out and tell me about your favorite cheeze recipes 🙂
Oh yes!! Got milk? Got problems!!