Eating no dairy, Day Half

I got inspired to stop eating dairy for 14 days.

I already ate dairy on Day 1 of my 14-day experiment without eating dairy.

This morning I completely forgot as I spread some butter on my morning bread.

And then there were cookies at the office. Dutch stroopwafels! Unfortunately, I ate them without thinking and then fished the plastic bag out of the kitchen trash can. Under the tea leaf, I found out that the cookies were made with glucose syrup and butter as the first two ingredients.

Otherwise, I was so happy to know that the cinnamon bread I get at Beumer & Lutum every morning is made with margarine. It is vegan!

And my lunch was a raw vegan salad, as always: 1 cucumber, 1 yellow bell pepper, 2 tomatoes, a few brown button mushrooms, and a handful of almonds.

Depite the setbacks, I am not at all disappointed in myself. These bumps on the road are keys to staying vegan. Now I know my barriers to eating vegan: butter and free sweets lying around. Why do I love butter on good bread? And why do I love eating sweets, especially free sweets? When I figure these answers out, I can release them.

Homemade Vegan Yogurt?

I found a pretty good tasting soy 'yogurt' yesterday, and I am trying to duplicate it at home.

Usually soy yogurts are full of stabilizers and other such junk that I can't pronounce. For example, plain Silk soy yogurt in the US is made of: Organic soymilk (filtered water, whole organic soybeans), rice starch, dextrose, organic evaporated cane juice, tricalcium phosphate, natural flavors, cultured glucose syrup solids, pectin, locust bean gum, ascorbic acid (vitamin C), yogurt cultures (L. bulgaricus, S. thermophilus, L. acidophilus, B. bifidum, L. casei, L. rhamnosus).

But Sojade is just "soya drink (natural spring water, whole soya beans 8%), and selected live cultures of which Bifidus and Acidophilus". And the taste is pretty good! And since I have cultured milk with yogurt cultures successfully before by following directions for making Greek yogurt from Bean Sprouts, it can't be that hard to culture soy milk with soy yogurt cultures. Basically, boil soy milk, let it cool to body temperature, add the live cultures, put in thermos for a few hours while the bacteria get it on--then yogurt!

So we will see what happens after 8-14 hours...

EDITED: When I made the yogurt and wrote this post, I forgot about this thing called the internet. I googled a bit and found some soy yogurt resources from soy milk makers.

I found out some cool facts. Apparently, the bacteria produces lactic acid faster if you add sugar to the soy milk! And that I could buy live non-dairy acidophilus (the Solgar brand is vegan) to make soy yogurt...which means that I could use it to culture nut milk to make nut cheese. And acidolphilus breeds roughly between 100 - 105F (40 - 45C), a little warmer than tempeh culture.