One step down...



Matt and I began the process of seeing prospective homes on May 8^th of this year, and — after having viewed nine properties — have found a place which we agree might be the best fit for our current and future needs.

In terms of location, this property is close enough to a major road that it's easily accessible by car and the York Region Transit bus service, which goes in to Finch station. Honestly, this was the biggest problem I had with the idea of moving North of Steeles — my jobs tend to rely on my ability to get to the TTC. Our real-estate agent assured Matt and me that what we'd get considerably more house for our money if we looked for townhouses just North of the city, rather than trying to stay on the subway line. So we'd have a place we could grow into, not something we'd have to sell in another 2-3 years to look for something larger.

As of yesterday, we've submitted an offer which has been accepted. We've yet to have the home inspector review the property, and a lawyer still has to go over the documentation. One concern I have is that the reserve fund is apparently diminished due to the fact that the units needed new roofing in 2006. We'd been told that the condo board decided on having each unit pay $1000 per year over 5 years for the purpose of not depleting the reserve fund, so I'm curious to see what comes up in the documentation.

Otherwise, I'm excited enough about it that I've already started considering what I'd like to do to make the place a home. What I like most about it is that it's aesthetically already in "move-in condition", for my tastes. Any renovations, tidying up or re-painting would just be icing on the cake.

Quiche, too



I also made a quiche this weekend, with the last of my homemade puff pastry as the base, organic eggs, some more of the organic soy milk, a sautéed, diced yellow onion, wilted organic spinach, prosciutto, fresh-cracked black pepper and sea salt.

I'm glad to say that I've got enough left over to fit into my weekly meal planning.

Banana bread with streusel topping



Both recipes taken from the Betty Crocker's Cookbook.

For the banana bread recipe, I used sucanat instead of sugar, organic soy milk instead of buttermilk, a blend of organic all-purpose flour and the last of my Ezekiel flour instead of Gold Medal® all-purpose flour, and omitted the nuts.

The streusel topping used however much cinnamon my spice grinder produced — I didn't measure the quantity.

Homemade brownies!



Read 'em and weep, T3H INTERNETZ.

Adapted from this recipe, using vegan margarine in place of the butter, a mix of organic sugar and sucanat for the sugar, and omitting the confectioner's sugar. I also added about 2 tablespoons of flax seed meal for the fibre and Omega-3. Should've added twice as much salt. Still über-awesome.

Dairy-free alternatives
Cream cheese



Friends of mine recently discovered that their young son is lactose-intolerant, a fact which will undoubtedly result in an adjustment for the whole family, if only in accommodating his dietary needs differently than for the rest of the group. This got me thinking about the knowledge I've acquired in terms of how to get around my own dietary restrictions, and how few resources I was able to get my hands on while I was looking into ways to still do something I love — cooking — while having to find cheats for the dairy components.

A lot of the time, having to make a non-dairy component to a recipe separately, then adding it in later, means that you're often working on a couple of, or several, recipes at a time. This is an unfortunate fact about cooking non-dairy recipes. Some of the time, you'll be able to track down and buy a product that is ready to use right away, but this usually isn't the case. That said, making your own dairy-free substitutes gives you control over the ingredients you use in a way that finding a pre-packaged product can't.

For this post, I want to cover cream cheese substitutes. I've blogged about "chezz" in the past, but have since made some new discoveries, so I wanted to update. Here's a breakdown of the four options, and some of their pros and cons:

• Tofutti's Better Than Cream Cheese: my "go to" choice for baking. It's the most convincingly cream cheese-like option I've tried in terms of flavour and texture and costs less than the priciest alternative. The downside is that it contains trans fats. I try to limit its use to baking, so that individual serving sizes contain only trace amounts of trans fats.


• Tofutti's Better Than Cream Cheese (No Trans Fat): costs the same as the above option. It's "stiffer" in texture than Tofutti's other offering, and slightly sweeter. Since it contains no trans fats, however, this is my preferred option for spreading on toast.


• Bute Island's Original Creamy Sheese: the most expensive choice listed (and possibly out of all dairy-free cream cheeses, period). That said, its texture and flavour are comparable to Tofutti's trans fatty Better Than Cream Cheese, without any of the trans fats it is a tiny bit grainier in texture, but it's a small price to pay for the lack of hydrogenation. It's ingredients are also less dubious in origin. Additionally, this is truly vegan, something which Tofutti's products can't claim. This is definitely a splurge item, but when I want to have "real" cream cheese on or in a dish, this is what I choose.


• Yoso's Spreadables: There is not enough ick in the world to describe. Pass this one up.


• Homemade Cream Chezz: a recipe I found in a vegan cookbook calls for curdling soy milk with lemon juice and allowing the resultant mixture to drain in a cheesecloth-lined sieve overnight before adding salt to taste. I've attempted this once and found it so unappealing that I threw most of it out, being unable to find a recipe that I could salvage it in.

For those looking into ways to eliminate or reduce dairy from their diets, my key bit of advice is to look into vegan recipes. The vegans are a bunch who refuse to consume anything derived from animals, yet crave a lot of the guilty pleasures the majority of us consider almost daily weaknesses (like my personal favourites, Cheetos). If you're looking for a dairy-free food you love, ask the vegans first, odds are good one of them has developed something to suit you.