MILKS!!!

My diet has changed a bit, but that's a whole different story.

What I'm sharing today is a link to a recipe for making your own oat milk! I found it so difficult to find non-dairy milks while on the first few phases of the diet because they would always have additives such as sunflower or safflower oil (now I just use goats milk or cows milk). So, if you're in that stage of the diet and need some milk for cooking or drinking, follow this link.

Also, my previous post mentioned the difficulty I had been having with finding a coconut milk that did not contain guar gum. I found one! The coconut milk at Trader Joe's is supposedly just coconut milk. I haven't gone there and picked any up myself yet, so when you go to get some make sure you double check the label first.

Resources for Ingredient Substitutions

I'm trying to build up a sort of library or catalog of things I find useful on this diet. Pretty much everything I make involves substituting one food for another. Here are some sites I've found helpful, and some others that I might look at some day.

Butter & Oil Substitutes
 The Kitchn: Did you know you can substitute avocado for butter? (link)

Baking Substitutes

The Joy of Baking Baking Ingredient Substitution Table (link)

Nightshade Substitutes
Good Substitutes for Tomato Products from followers of The Kitchn  (link)
How to Replace Nightshades: Tomato (link), Potato (link), Peppers (link), and Eggplant (link).

Everything Substitutes! 
The Cooks Thesaurus (link) is great for everything, but especially for learning about using the many non-wheat flours.
The Kitchn: Guide to Food Substitutions (link).

Other Creative, Healthful Subs
83 Healthy Recipe Substitutions (link).


Other sites I haven't looked at yet:
E-Cookbooks Ingredient Substitutions (link).
Recipietips.com Food Substitutions List (link).

By the way, The Kitchn is so great. I LOVE it! I can't eat almost anything on the site, but I learn so much that it's indispensable.

Good Places for Recipies & Modifying Recipies for an Elimination Diet

The NY Times Recipes for Health (click for link) displays individual ingredients and recipes that one can use for them. On an elimination diet I still have to do a lot of substitutions, but it's still very helpful.

Gluten-free blogs are incredibly helpful for finding recipes that use limited ingredients or alternative grains such as amaranth or millet. Wheat-Free Meat-Free (link) does a regular "recipe roundup" where the author shares links to new creative vegetarian, gluten-free recipes from various blogs.

For gluten-free baking, Gluten-free on a Shoestring (link) is amazing. A lot of G-free baking involves using gums and other ingredients that aren't on my list, such as dairy, almonds and walnuts. Here are some ideas I have for ingredient substitutions though: tapioca flour for potato starch or cornstarch, brown rice or cane sugar syrup for maple syrup or honey, and ghee or clarified butter for traditional butter. (Gluten-free Girl and the Chef (link) explains flax or chia seeds can replace gums, but since those are not on the list I'll have to just stick to naturally gum-free recipes.) There are obviously limitations to some of my substitutions. But, for now they'll have to do.

I'm not a big sweets fan, but I'm learning that citrus fruits can be great for adding flavor to savory dishes. For example, theKitchn (link) has a post on cooking with lemon. For me, these  recipes are currently more for inspiration than for actual use given I can't use ~99% of the listed ingredients. But, they sure do look delicious!