But, Daddy, It Has Vimatins, and I NEED Them

One of the things that we started to worry about as we were moving toward having no dairy in our lives was the lack of vitamin D and calcium that our children would miss as a result of not having milk anymore.  I mean, it’s probably fine if I didn’t actually love my children, but I kind of felt that nutrition should be toward the top of my list when it came to actually continuing to care for them.

I was pleasantly surprised to find that almond milk (specifically the Silk PureAlmond brand) has 25% more calcium than a regular glass of milk.  And all of that without that pesky, annoying side effect of making me want to shoot my kids!  What a deal we have for you today!

We’ve also put the boys on vitamins, but found that a number of vitamins (especially the “cheaper” tablet brands) have milk or milk byproducts directly in them as it helps to dilute the cost as well as the flavor of the vitamin.  We have since switched to Flintstones gummy vitamins, as they are see through, taste good (relatively speaking) and don’t make us act weird.  Well, any weirder than we already did.

Morning Muffins

The boys and I were getting tired of having PopTarts (no milk, woohoo!) and no-milk cereals for breakfast every day, so Chrissy was nice enough last night to make us some Duncan Hines Simple Mornings blueberry streusel muffins as well as some Simple Mornings cinnamon muffins.  They were quite good.  If you have egg allergies, you can replace the eggs in it with bananas, which is kind of interesting.  Gabriel and Benton both ate the cinnamon ones and said that they were very enjoyable.  I had a blueberry one to start and finished with a cinnamon one.  Here’s where we run into trouble.

My milk reactions are somewhat different than the boys’.  Theirs immediately affects their behavior, driving them into fits of being uncontrollable (sometimes for hours).  My allergy is much closer to a lactose intolerance in that, a bit after eating products with milk in them, my stomach begins to ache in a very odd way and I just don’t feel “right.”  I mean, generally speaking, I don’t feel right, but what can you expect from someone that works at a nonprofit for a living.  That right there should tell you that something’s wrong with me (tongue planted firmly in cheek).

So, on my way to work, my stomach starts hurting and I can tell that something has had milk in it.  Uh oh, that’s not good.  What could it have been?  Well as “luck” would have it, the second part of my allergy leads me to burping (not attractive, I know).  This gets kinda gross, so skip to the next part if you’re easily squeamish.  My burps end up tasting like the offending item.  In this case, I could taste blueberries VERY strongly, but no cinnamon, so naturally, I think it might be the blueberry muffins.  I plan on trying them tomorrow morning, because diagnosing a problem ingredient/item is much easier when you only have a sore tummy but can actually use your brain (stop laughing, Chrissy).

Recipes, Recipes... This is an APB for Recipes

I’m sort of running short of ideas to write about at the moment, so I’m going to do something a little odd (this is becoming a habit).  I’m going to ask you to give me some of your favorite recipe ideas in the comments section and I’m going to try making them milk-free for you.  Every family has those “staple” items that they want to continue to eat after they go milk or milk/soy free, but just can’t seem to figure out.  Or they can figure it out, but it takes 800 ingredients to get there (NO FUN).  

Well, The Ervins want to help.  So submit your comments and leave me your real name or email, and I’ll email/Facebook you to find out what the full recipe is so that I can remake it.