Monday, September 12, 2011

Embracing a Dairy-Free Lifestyle

I am finally coming to terms with my extreme intolerance to lactose. It's really upsetting because I LOVE CHEESE SO MUCH! But I have come to find that even the slightest bit of dairy in my diet is detrimental.

So I have started bookmarking dairy-free diet blogs to help me embrace this new milk-free lifestyle. Today I plan to head over to the City Market in Burlington and stock up on dairy-free products, such as Tofutti brand treats. I'll be testing them out and to see which brand of fake cheese slices I should carry with me to the next BBQ.

This weekend I completely winter-proofed my garden at Mike's house. I had to rip out all the plants and weeds, before covering the soil with a large tarp. I took apart the fencing and lugged it into the woods. I also threw all the wasted fruits and veggies (mostly rotting tomatoes, weird carrots, yucky swiss chard and damaged apples) into the compost bin Mike and I managed to salvage from the overgrown briar patch in the side yard. Thanks for the help Mike!!

It was a lot of hard yard work, and I'm pretty banged up. Next year I plan to blog a lot more about my gardening, now that I sort of know what I'm doing.

Anyways, before tarping the garden, I pulled out AT LEAST 100 big orange carrots! So of course I got the brilliant idea to make carrot cupcakes for me, Elly and Heather (my roomies), and my lucky duck co-workers at Wyatt Research.

Heather is just starting the nutritionist grad program at UVM, and her program director is putting her and her classmates on a "gluten free" diet. So now I am taking the challenge of making a dairy-free, gluten free carrot cupcake that actually tastes yummy!

Wish me luck :)