Gracie's Kitchen

It's been a couple of weeks now.  Part of the adjustment to cutting animal products from my diet is figuring out what to eat instead and making sure those things are in the house.  It's been eye opening to realize how much we relied on cheese, butter, cottage cheese and yogurt as staples.   It's very much like when I found out I was gluten intolerant.  I had to shift my thinking away from what I couldn't eat to what I still can eat.   Part of the challenge for me in eating mostly vegan is that I can't eat gluten (wheat, barley, etc.).   Cutting out dairy products is harder for us than cutting out meat.

We are in the process of figuring it out.  I found a great recipe in the January Sunset magazine.  It's a recipe for Wild Rice, butternut squash and cannellini stew.  Of course I couldn't follow the recipe exactly just because I don't think I've ever done that in my life.  I left out the dried mushrooms because I forgot to buy them, I increased the amount of butternut squash because the one we had from our garden was big.  Our Swiss chard plant is not producing anymore so I used frozen spinach and I used vegetable broth instead of chicken.  Recipes are just guidelines, right?   It was really good.

We still have butter and chicken and cheese in the house.  I imagine we will still be buying cheese because one of my cats adores it.   I wouldn't dream of depriving her!