going dairy-free: breaky

Breakfast can be a difficult meal to figure out if you've had to go dairy-free. Suddenly, you can't have milk for cereal or cheese for your eggs. I rotate among a few foods, including a couple that are actually made instead of from a box. Keep in mind that I'm not focused on being the most healthy of eaters right now, so I'm not exactly giving those kind of options.

Pancakes are my favorite. Bisquick makes a mean pancake. It may not be the fanciest option for pancake out there, but it's fast and it works. Plus, Bisquick mix is dairy-free. You have to add milk, and I've added both vanilla almond milk and vanilla rice milk. The almost milk adds a stronger flavor than the rice, but both work well. I personally love to mix semi-sweet chocolate chips into mine. Ghiradelli's semi-sweets are dairy-free but manufactured on equipment that also manufacture dairy products; G's never had a reaction to these chocolate chips (and I've eaten a lot of pancakes) so I've found these options to be fine. You can also add anything else you like, such as blueberries, nuts, etc.

I'll also make French toast. Arnold's breads are all dairy-free, that I've found: wheat, Italian white, and potato. The white works well for French toast, better than my old bread!  I break four eggs into a bowl. Add a dash of vanilla extract. Add an eight of a cup or so of vanilla almond or rice milk. Heat up a skillet and melt some Earth's Balance buttery spread. We also sprinkle cinnamon onto each side of the bread right before putting it on the skillet. Sprinkle a little powered sugar on top after they're done. These were awesome a few days ago.

Homemade breads can also be a great breakfast option. Zucchini and banana are my current favorites, and many recipes call for no dairy.

I love me some Poptarts. The cherry ones are dairy-free.

Many trail mix bars are a good option, except for chocolate ones. Nature's Valley trail mix fruit and nut bars are my current favorite.

You can, of course, have eggs with no cheese. Eggs kind of make me want to barf ever since I had G, but you can add all sorts of toppings to them to make some cheese-less tasty.

Most cereals are okay as well. I've dropped out of eating cereal for the most part because I just don't like the flavor of them mixed with almond or rice milk. I haven't tried the various kinds of soy milk out there because many babies allergic to milk proteins are also allergic to soy, so I try to limit my in-take of soy products.

That's about all I eat for breakfast. I'm sure there are other options, but this works for me. Next time I'll focus on my favorite desserts. Tasties are a difficult thing to figure out if you're dairy-free, but there are actually a few really good options out there if you're a chocolate lover like me.