Officially addicted to...

[wickedrodent]

Soymilk! Oh my goodness, its SO good. I just bought some today (chocolate in the place of regular chocolate milk) and dang, I can't stop drinking it. It makes me want to go Vegan. I don't know if I could live without cheese though.. are there any good alternatives?

[PiggieMamaKelly]

Chocolate Silk is pretty amazing. I hardly ever buy it because it would be gone by sunset of the same day I'm sure. Even the Light chocolate is great. Very Vanilla is not bad as well. I use Vanilla or Plain as my usual form of "milk".

[wickedrodent]

Yup, I have emptied almost 1/2 of the entire 1/2 gallon in one day. I have the light chocolate. Im going to try the vanilla next time I get to the store.

I don't think I can go vegan entirely at the moment. I usually buy vegetarian microwave dinners and everything has at least milk or cheese in them. I am swomped with school, work, and pigs and don't have time to cook vegan meals all the time. Once things cool down I might start trying to change over. My family isn't going to be very happy, but it will probably make me feel a whole lot better. I think I will start with cutting out eggs. That I can do.

[thalestral]

Tofutti cheese is awesome and I've heard that Cheezly is pretty good for melting cheese. I'd quite like to make my own from cashew nuts and nutritional yeast though as once dairy was out my system I lost any desire to have things that replicate taste or texture exactly.

I love Tofutti cream cheese though.

I make large batches of dinners up at the weekend and keep them in storage boxes in the fridge. It saves me a lot of time and I enjoy cooking at the weekend :]

[alerz]

My personal experience with vegan cheese products has not been so great, but this might be due to my obsession with cheese. I've also tried Soymilk yogurt and it just doesn't taste right to me. I do second/third/etc. everyone on regular Soymilk though! I absolutely hate the taste of regular milk, so it's a great alternative and the chocolate variety is so delicious!

[TrekkiePiggies]

I love chocolate Silk! Sun Soy is also pretty tasty.

Personally, I really like to get Unsweetened Soymilk. Even regular "plain" type soymilk often has 13 or so grams of refined sugar per serving (that's like a bowl of Froot Loops sugar wise, more than in cow's milk), and vanilla or chocolate has more sugar. It's great if you want a sweet drink, much better for you than soda, but for everyday drinking I much prefer the unsweetened type. It's a different taste, but it has a lovely mild sweetness all its own and is very refreshing. I recommend everyone try it at least once!

[kathrynj]

You can use the soymilk to make custard, rice cream, etc instead of yoghurt. I have yet to try making yoghurt with it though.

For the cheese, I found that savory yeast flakes, (not the nutritional or brewers yeast) is a nice alternative for mac cheese and lasagnes. Anything that I wouod have put cheese on I put yeasty flakes on.

At least once my daughter was vegan for a while, she enjoyed them, but it was almost like the dairy had to be out of her system before she enjoyed it if that makes sense?

[ortal]

I had a bad experience a LONG time ago, which made me adverse to it. I tried it again today, I am trying to transition from vegetarian to vegan, and it was MUCH better then I remember. I might have had a bad batch before. I bought a big thing of chocolate soy milk, because my daughter will drink it even if I dont like it. I bought a small one of regular soymilk, incase I didnt like it, but I did! It is so much... lighter then regular milk. I don't know about drinking it straight, but I can definetly add that to my coffee and have it in my cereal. I don't drink straight milk really anyways.

I'm very pleased. My boyfrend tried it to and he agreed that we can buy soymilk from now on. It will make it easier for me not to drink milk if it is not in the house. A big container of regular and maybe a small of vanilla, we can always make chocolate milk for Bella with powder.

Can soy milk be subsituted for milk in any recipe?

[kathrynj]

So far, the soy milk is working for me in most recipies. Rice milk however doesn't.

[i-love-nev]

OMG I love choco soy milk! I could drink it alllll day it is so good!

[gpigluver14]

I love Silk too! Very good stuff! In my opinion, Silk probably tastes really good because it's organic. To me, organic foods taste 135786142 times better than processed foods with all the added ingredients.

[TrekkiePiggies]

I think part of it is the simple ingredient list--soybeans, water, cocoa, and sugar, plus some other necessary stuff. If you buy a jug of "chocolate milk" you'll find corn syrup, weird thickeners, maybe cocoa if your lucky, and so forth, which give it that really odd and distinctive "processed-food flavor."

[JarBax]

Having switched to soya milk around 13 years ago, I was interested recently to find that I actually prefer rice milk! I picked up the wrong carton at the supermarket, and decided to give rice milk a go, with positive results. If there's someone out there who's not so keen on soya milk, give rice milk a try!!

I have yet to find a good vegan-cheese, but will look out for the toffuti cheese thalestral mentioned.

[TrekkiePiggies]

Have you tried Horchata? It's a Latin American drink made with cinnamon and sweetened ricemilk, served chilled. Extremely tasty! If you can't find it locally you can make it at home.

Almond milk is also very tasty.

Has anyone tried hempmilk? I tried some but wasn't too enthusiastic about it. The vanilla flavor was kinda like liquid tapioca pudding with some not-quite-right notes mixed in.

The only problem with non-soy "milks" is the low protein level. If you use veggie milks as a main protein source, stick with soymilk. If you're just looking for some yummy beverages, by all means go for the other neat stuff on the market.

[thalestral]

[FONT=Trebuchet MS]JarBax, Holland & Barretts has the Tofutti cream cheese often in their refrigerator section up the back along wi[/FONT][FONT=Trebuchet MS]th some yummy [/FONT][FONT=Trebuchet MS][SIZE=-1]pâté[/SIZE][/FONT][FONT=Trebuchet MS]s *drools*

I'm not so keen on the taste of normal un/sweetened soy milks myself but I use them in baking and my partner uses them in his cups of tea. I love rice milk on my breakfast cereal, and adore coconut milk in our Thai and Indian cooking. Oh, and Rice Dream Hazelnut & Almond is droolworthy. I think there are more flavours of soy milk available that I just don't have access to though, I love the chocolate one and would love to try the vanilla and banana flavours I hear so much about![/FONT]

[Emmett]

Have you tried the Silk Live soy yogurt? I love the stuff. I add frozen berries to it once in a while but it is good on its own.

[Percy's Mom]

Take the soy yogurt (or any yogurt if you're not vegan), put it in a blender with frozen berries and whir it all together. It's like soft serve sherbert but better for you. Yum!

[wickedrodent]

Oh, that sounds great; I might have to try that.

I have been 3/4 vegan since monday. I have stopped drinking milk all together unless it is soy and have not eaten cheese for 4 days. The only thing I have not given up is eggs.

[Love4Piggers]

I love soy milk and soy yogurt, but the only vegan cheese I have found tolerable is Tofutti, but it is usually pretty hard to find. All other brands that are truly vegan (meaning no casein or sodium caseinate) aren't very tasty in my opinion. I like Silk soymilk as well, but I think that the 8th Continent brand is really good, too. I even wrote once when their milk was just starting to be sold in stores to compliment them on how good it tasted, and they sent me a free t-shirt. So no complaints here.

A big congrats by the way, Wicked, on starting the transition to vegan!!

[wickedrodent]

Thanks, but yeah.. I cracked. Im eating cheese again -sulks- although in more limited proportions. Still no milk though