#for context my partner needs protein and she's been asking me to cook eggs for her bc she can't use the stove rn

[lemememeringue]

therapy hasn't been useful for big healing™ but every once in a while I get truly actionable advice. like "boil eggs". and that's helpful for some reason.

[millennialtestkitchen-blog]

About Me

As is tradition with most new blogs, I must introduce myself with a brief life history. I must explain events and adventures I have been through that brought me to the point that I decided I need to blog about myself.

This blog has been created mainly to share my trials and triumphs with trying out recipes from the internet, and sometimes inventing my own. Another huge inspiration for making this blog, and hopefully something I will be able to pass along to my readers are creative ways to cook for special dietary requirements or restrictions. I will explain more about why this is important to me in a few paragraphs. 

I have always had a passion for cooking. I grew up watching the Food Network with my grandfather and cooking with my grandmother. I learned the basics from my own mother and father as well. If I look back, I think the first thing I ever learned to make, then successfully made for myself - by myself - was pancakes. Yes, they were the “just add water” kind, but my grandmother always added a dash (no measurements) of vanilla extract. I did the same thing and they turned out pretty good. She taught me how to look for the bubbles that rose from the bottom a few minutes after they hit the hot griddle. once the bubbles did not fill themselves back in after they popped, it was time to flip. My parents came down stairs around 6:30am on a Saturday to find me in my pajamas enjoying 3 pancakes by myself watching cartoons. I was hungry and they weren’t awake yet, so I taught myself how to cook out of necessity and desire for a specific thing.

Honestly, the first thing I actually ever made for myself in a similar context was Cheerios and milk with honey. Except we were out of milk and honey so I used water and cinnamon powder. I was 5 years old and the sensation of flavorless soggy Cheerios congealing in my mouth with the heaping pile of cinnamon still lingers when I think back to that fateful morning

Looking back, a lot of the things I have created or learned to cook very well have all come from necessity. I hope to share all of my own original recipes on this blog at some point, but this “cooking only due to necessity” brings me to where I am at in my life at the moment. 

I found out November 2016 that I have a dairy allergy, and wheat and gluten also were causing reactions in my body that I was not happy with. My doctor and I decided that Thanksgiving 2016 would be my last hurrah with dairy and wheat in large amounts. Since then I have been 99.9% dairy free (that 0.01% is accounting for times I did not realize I was eating something with dairy in it). I have also been 90% gluten free as well (I will let myself have a piece of bread at a restaurant, or a few sips of my partners beer, but that’s about it. However I was served a beer at a family friends house and due to social anxiety and lack of other beverages I drank it without saying anything and I did not have a terrible reaction to it) 

Within 3 days of giving up dairy and gluten back in 2016, my face cleared up, my stomach stopped hurting all of the time, my body felt less lethargic and my mental fogginess cleared up as well. Before I gave up dairy and gluten I was eating a mostly vegetarian diet, inspired by my current roommate and the fact that I lived in Hawaii and everyone I knew was vegan. And there is so much great access to veggies there, it was cheap way to fill up without spending money on meat. However I did start consuming a huge amount of dairy, especially considering I never drank milk as a kid and always hated cheese until my later teen years. I grew to love fresh mozzarella, cream in my coffee, and my late night hangover cure of a 2AM Smoked Mozzarella and Tomato Grilled Cheese Sandwich. I also loved beer, and having turned 21 earlier that year, I was drinking a lot of it (while slightly priding myself on being a woman who actually appreciated a good IPA) 

I remember about a week before I had to stop eating dairy, I went into the local grocery store in Hawaii, grabbed some random dish from the deli and sat in my car eating it while thinking to myself “I’m so glad I don’t have any food allergies, I love being able to eat whatever I want and try all of these new cuisines and foods. Maybe I should be a food critic” 

The first few months were hard on me. I loved to cook already, but I lost the ability to cook about 90% of my comfort staples and nightly dinner ideas. I was stuck and found myself eating a lot of rice and veggies, and I ate a lot of corn chips and salsa. One time I even had a reaction to those because some dumb brand at the local store added whey into their corn tortilla chips... 

I finally got tired of eating Asian themed food and snacks and started to think outside of the box. I think one of the first things I made that was remotely creative was Vegan Street Tacos. It wasn’t anything fancy, but I loved that I could make something so hearty and lovely and I didn’t have to worry about it giving me a reaction or asking too many questions at a restaurant. I was able to just cook it, sit down, and eat until i felt like exploding.  

This inspired me to think of all of my favorite comfort dishes and try and recreate them in dairy free and gluten free ways. This is pretty hard sometimes because a lot of things that are Gluten Free are not always Dairy Free and vice versa. Most of the time if I am feeling lazy I have to look up Gluten Free and Vegan recipes to ensure I don’t have to find a good substitution for butter, or get a good gluten free flour recommendation. These recipes often call for crazy substitutions though, and since I am a meat eater, and I can eat eggs, the vegan recipes call for ingredients I do not have on hand, and sometimes ingredients that are very expensive or hard to find. 

The hardest stuff to make in the kitchen are actually deserts. Substitution is easy with cooking, because the chemistry between ingredients isn’t as important. Baking is a science and There aren’t a lot of people out there who have perfected the science behind almond flour acting like regular flour. So it’s a lot harder to just “sub in” a gluten free or dairy free ingredient. Butter is the absolute hardest thing to find substitutions for, and it’s the bane of my existence. I have been told so many times “oh this is dairy free, it just has some butter in it, but no milk or cheese” and I have to explain to the person that BUTTER IS DAIRY. It doesn’t help that I am allergic to Casein, and not Lactose. This means that I am allergic to the protein in diary that wont bake out of stuff like lactose does. And butter is like concentrated Casein. 

Thanks for bearing with me so far, I’ll get to my blog theme right here. 

After adventuring around in life and having 2 years of gf/df eating under my belt, i have found myself becoming more creative in the kitchen. I read a lot of recipes online and have figured out what substitutions work best for me, and still taste great for my boyfriend, who can eat whatever he wants. I make food that is satisfying and delicious for me, and is still enjoyable for those who do not have allergies or restrictions. 

On this blog I will mostly be sharing recent meals that I have made and explain how I did it to achieve a GF/DF meal. I will try my best to share price of ingredients but keep in mind this will change based on location and time of year.

I will also tag and label a recipe that is VEGAN if I did not use any meat or eggs. Keep in mind though, that 99% of what I will post about will already be safe for gluten sensitive and dairy avoiding individuals. That being said, there are some products I purchase that are “made in a factory that shares equipment with milk or wheat” I have found some products with this disclaimer that do not give me a reaction, and some do. SO keep in mind if you are Celiac you will still need to check your food labels for ingredients you buy. If you want though, I am happy to test products for you (just let me know)  

Basically this blog will have a link to a recipe I found, or the name of the cook book, and I will explain how easy it was to replicate.I will explain any substitutions I did to achieve a meal I can consume as well. In addition, I will post some of my own original recipes I have created, and on occasion I may be posting restaurant or product reviews when I find a place that I felt was really accommodating or a product I found and loved. (right now I am obsessed with Skinny Pop’s white cheddar popcorn because it’s vegan and I missed white cheddar popcorn a lot)

And with that now you know about me and what I am trying to accomplish here. I want to share my experiences to hopefully inspire other people who share my struggles. I love to eat and just because I have to watch what I eat, doesn’t mean I can’t enjoy what I eat. 

Always feel free to send me questions on tumblr or via email :) 

also I would appreciate any patience with me and my new blog. I am still figuring out how I want to format things and when and what to write.