Non Dairy Meal Ideas, Replacement Foods??

My daughter is allergic to dairy as well. I typically do not need to cook two meals. Whenever possible I substitute rice milk when a recipe calls for milk. I also substitute either Earth Balance or Fleishmann's UNSALTED margarine for butter.

I avoid recipes that call for cream of anything soup.

As for cheese... You need to watch. Some that you'd think are dairy free (Veggie Slices or Rice milk slices) still contain casein. My daughter uses Tofutti slices for sandwiches and Daiya shreds on pizza. I've read that the mozzarella flavor is the least 'offensive'. With that being said, THAT is where I draw the line with eating the same meal :-) If I had to go dairy free I would never eat 'cheese' again. The smell and taste of the non-dairy cheese is just nowhere close enough for me. I'd rather go without. Tonight I made nachos. I made one plate with Daiya and a plate with regular cheese for the rest of us.

I make my own breadcrumbs from the leftover heels of dairy free bread. If I want them to be Italian flavor I add the Italian formula of Mrs. Dash.

I buy Heinz pork gravy and Campbell's turkey gravy.

I'm 7 years into this so I'm sure there are other adjustments I make that I'm just not thinking about right now. If there is anything specific that is giving you trouble, PM me and I will let you know if I have found a solution.

This is a link you may want to look at. I work with Caryn so I have tasted some of her recipes, none of them have milk in them because she is a vegan. You cannot tell there is any difference between them and the real deal.

http://stlveggirl.com/Home.php

There is tab for recipes and to contact her. If there is anyone on earth that can help you it is Caryn.

Cheese is evil for even those of us that arent allergic to it.
Now that you have a child with issues you should think about changing to a healthy lifestyle that does not include dairy. The internet is FULL of great non dairy recipes. If you want non dairy cheese, check out some Vegan blogs, they know about the non dairy cheeses.

At 13 mos we realized our daughter had a milk allergy -hives, ear infections, etc. We took her off all dairy fairly easily.
The big surprise to me was if we took our little bag of soy cheese with us to restaurants, they would cheerily make us kid pizzas or grilled cheeses with her soy cheese. I only had one place give me a hard time and once I talked to the manager, they were happy to do it, also. Most of the chefs in our area got to know us, along with plenty of the waiters. (My husband is a picky eater-we eat out a LOT.)
So I'm no help with home meals-but at least now you know you can still go out to eat!

My son is 100% dairy free. Like yours, even the slightest bit of dairy makes him pretty sick.

Daiya cheese melts decently, much more than any other brand we have tried. We've used it on chicken parmesan and homemade pizza (we use Trader Joe's dough) and it's good - not great if you're used to the real thing, but not bad. Tofutti slices don't melt, but work well in sandwiches. As a previous poster said, be VERY careful when buying soy and rice cheese. Many contain casein. Ditto for some soy yogurts. Tofutti and Daiya do not. Read every label carefully.

Some typical dinners at our house:
Panko-breaded chicken. Mix a variety of spices/seasonings into the panko crumbs for different flavors
Stir fry chicken - sauteed with soy sauce or teriyaki sauce
Anything beef/ground meat - hamburgers, steak, meatballs (we get good Turkey meatballs at Costco or Trader Joe's)
Pork chops - just brush on seasoning (herbs/spices)

For side dishes, we do potatoes, either baked, roasted or mashed. We use soy milk and dairy-free margarine (we like Earth's Balance brand best but Nucoa is good too) to mix in with the mashed potatoes.
Rice, either white, brown or rice-a-roni (low sodium chicken flavor is a good one)
Pasta with sauce and a variety of meat and/or vegetable mix-ins

Any vegetable, roasted, sauteed or steamed. Season with salt & pepper or we use soy/teriyaki sauce

There are a few of my favorite dishes that I can't make anymore, but overall, we have managed pretty well. We eat the same dinner every night and never cook separate meals.

The Dinosaur-shaped chicken nuggets - we've gotten them at Costco and Ralph's (aka Kroger's) - are pretty good.

Amy's brand Non Dairy Rice Crust Soy Cheeze pizza isn't bad. This will be very handy when he's a little older and every single birthday party you go to has pizza for lunch. Likewise, we make a batch of cupcakes and freeze them, then take one out for each party.

It was much harder to manage when my son was younger. He didn't know what not to eat when around other children and we were still trying to figure everything out. Now that he's almost six, we've got it down and it's pretty easy now.

My husband developed a dairy allergy within the last year. His reaction to dairy is pretty severe. The change was hard at first, but we have adapted pretty well. I don't cook different meals. Sometimes I may add real cheese to our meals separately, but we all eat the same things together. It helps that we don't eat a lot of prepackaged meals.

We have learned to look for the dairy kosher symbols of prepared foods. You want parvae foods. Those are dairy free. Goggle this and you will be able to identify dairy free processed foods.

We've also learned that most of Boar's Head lunch meats are dairy free.
You'll quickly learn which brands are "safe" bets and which need to be double checked.

My hubby prefers rice milk (he wants to avoid soy as much as possible and he doesn't love Almond milk). So most recipes cook well with rice milk. I can usually substitute it in most things. It's trial and error.

Sometimes the rice milk doesn't work. When baking we usually use a soy milk...many recipes need the bit of extra fat to taste good. In mashed potatoes, none of the milk alternatives worked for us. So I add a bit of fake sour cream and some chicken broth...no one can tell the difference.

Toffutti makes a tasty fake cream cheese and sour cream. They are pretty close to the original. These get used a good deal in our house. Add a little flour and chicken broth and I can make cream sauces without milk. When hubby wants a little cheese flavor without using fake cheese, the cream cheese substitute comes in handy. There are also many butter alternatives available too.

Cheese has been the one major issue. We haven't found one that we really like. Diaya gets the best reviews online. Diaya cheese melts pretty good, but my hubby is not a fan of their plain shredded stuff (the baby will probably like it just fine). We all seem to like the Diaya Havarti wedges and Cheddar wedges ok. (Usually the kids and I use the regular stuff and he uses the fake cheese). In general, we just don't eat cheese too often. It's missed, but probably a lot healthier for all of us.

Instead of ice cream, we have popsicles or sorbet.

We have just learned to adapt. I used to use cream soups as an easy base. Now, I usually make a flour and broth roux. Not that much more work and probably better for the waistline. Instead of pizza treats, we do cheese-less strombolis. Veggies and fruits are always a safe bet, so we eat and snack on those even more (we have always been big fruit and veggie eaters, so now we have to be even better stocked). I have always made our chicken nuggets from scratch, now I just use Panko bread crumbs.
HTH!

I have had to cut dairy out of my diet. I eat coconut milk yogurt and ice cream (YUMMY) and just skip cheese. There just is no substitute. I don't eat cereal, but I have made smoothies with both almond milk and coconut milk. I would NOT recommend soy. Too many GMO varieties out there and bad issues with soy itself.