Day 18: Freaky fake cheese

I tried Daiya faux cheese the other night, and let me tell you, it is JUST like real moocow cheese.  It smells the same, looks the same, melts the same, and even stretches the same.  I thought it would be super exciting to eat something so close to cheese, but to be honest, it freaked me out!  Me, who used to eat melted-cheese-in-a-bowl....totally freaked out by fake cheese stretchiness.  In fact, I am so unused to cheese (it's been over 4 years since I've eaten it) that I almost choked on the stretchiness.  And my tummy reacted to it in the same way it used to react to real cheese--it was not a happy camper.  I think I prefer Follow Your Heart--it tries so hard to be cheese but it's not, it just kind of glops off your pizza--but there's something weird and space-alien-y about imitation food that's so convincing that you have to have another person try it just to be sure it's still fake.

However, I did find a convenience pizza that my little guy just loves--Amy's Kitchen Single Serve Non-Dairy Rice Crust Cheeze Pizza.  This is actually a true non-dairy pizza, with no milk parts at all.  It also has a rice crust, which to me makes it a little soggy, but my son loves because he doesn't like crust or anything hard.  It's gluten-free and sweetened with agave nectar--no refined sugars--so Mommy got to have some, too (I added the aforementioned Daiya cheese to it).  They're pricey little buggers, though, and pretty hefty on the fat, so they're definitely a once-in-awhile treat.

I also made tofu scramble again, but failed miserably this time.  I cooked the tofu too long and it got all dry and gross, and I added cannellini beans--which just don't go with tofu.  Black beans or pinto beans would probably have been a better bet, but I had cannellini beans from a kale recipe I was going to try.  I waited too long to use my kale, though, and it got all moldy in the fridge.  Sigh. 

Yesterday I was at my local used bookstore (I can spend hours in a bookstore, or the library) and I asked an employee if they had a copy of The Kind Diet.  She was so funny and honest--"No, we don't, because I can guarantee you that if we did, I would've grabbed it already!"  I told her I was also looking for the cookbook Veganomicon, and she said that it's an awesome book (they didn't have that, either).  She also recommended another cookbook to me called Laurel's Kitchen, which is a vegan cookbook from the 70's.  I think I will be asking for Veganomicon for my birthday.

The night we had pizza my little man wanted more, and I told him that he had to eat his green beans first (which is pretty much the only green thing this kid will eat) but he refused.  He insisted that he was still hungry, though, so I told him he could have something healthy, like a banana.  He said no, he wanted pizza, and I waved him towards his green beans.  A few minutes later he comes back to me and says, "Mommy, I want somefing heawfy!"  "Like what?"  He gives me his little stinker grin and says, "A popsicle!"  I just started cracking up--he did too, because whenever we laugh at something he says he thinks he's a comic genius--and informed him that a popsicle is not healthy, and told him to eat his green beans.  I'm going to have to find a green smoothie recipe or something to get more veggies into that kid.

Tomorrow is the farmers market!  I hope they have more blueberries.