Need help with a dairy free menu

[waitingforgrace]

We are hosting DH's family next weekend for an early Christmas celebration. SIL can't eat dairy. She has no other limitations on her diet. I'm having trouble thinking of things to make. I need 3 breakfasts, 3 lunches (probably just sandwiches or salad, maybe soup), and 1 dinner which will be a smoked pork shoulder, roasted veggies and something TBD. I guess I primarily need help with breakfast ideas.

[crl]

Are you going to cook breakfast? Or just serve cold cereal, toast type stuff?

Cooking breakfast is pretty easy. Bacon and eggs. Homemade pancakes from scratch, substitute soy/rice/almond milk and dairy free margarine. Oatmeal (not flavored instant) with same substitutes.

Buying is a bit trickier because you have to read labels for cereal, bread and bagels carefully. Lots of them have milk (often "whey").

For lunch, soup is a good one. Sandwiches are tricky because not only the bread but also the lunch meat may have dairy. Salad is pretty easy. No cheese, watch out for dairy in croutons and dressings.

Basically, I would just plan my typical menus and then look/post for any potential dairy. You can substitute for nearly anything but cheese. Cheese is impossible.

Catherine

[flashy09]

If you can find a dairy free bread (I actually don't have much trouble with that), breakfast can be toast and jam or honey, eggs, bacon, sausage or you could do a breakfast burrito with avocado, eggs and salsa. Lunch could be soup and tuna fish sandwich or a grilled chicken/steak salad with balsamic vinagrette instead of a creamy dressing.

[Pepper]

I make waffles & pancakes using almond milk for milk-allergic DS2. I sub olive oil (or melted bacon fat, depending on the recipe!) for the butter. IME waffles hold up just fine in the freerzer, so if you're pressed for time you can make a double batch a week ahead & freeze them; warm up in the toaster to serve.

Get a tub of some butter substitute to use for cooking eggs, etc and on toast. Our favorite is the Earth Balance soy-free one, it has the best "mouthfeel" and is not too salty (some of the butter substitutes are terribly salty - I used to use unsalted butter).

I've also had good results using the Pioneer Woman's recipe for skillet cornbread, subbing plain almond milk for the buttermilk (leave out the baking soda in the recipe). Corn bread is good to serve with chili or soup, of course :-) though we eat it for breakfast too.

For dinners or lunches you can make casseroles, but use gravy-type sauce made with bacon fat orsmaltz. I saved the fat from our Thanksgiving turkey and made some really yummy turkey tetrazzini.

FYI I've found that many of the Back to Nature brand cookies and crackers are dairy-free (though not all- check the labels). I get their chcoclate chip cookies and peanut creme cookies all the time, and their wheat crackers taste just like wheat thins. They are a little pricey but I was at Whole Foods today and they had the crackers on sale.

Oh my and SIL swears by the So Delicious brand of coffee creamer. My son likes their coconut milk yogurts and ice cream, too. Also Trader Joe's has a really good coconut milk chocolate ice cream. And if you can find it, the Almande brand of almond milk yogurt is really good (found it at our Whole Foods).

ETA: I got the brand name wrong - it's Amande almond milk yogurt.