So far the soy free diet has not proven to be too tough.  If it has done one thing it has led me to a bit more variety in my eats.  For lunch I had my usual, a tomato sandwich but I had nothing to pu ton it as Vegenaise contains soy.  Looking around the refrigerator I found a bottle of garlic marinade from Williams-Sonoma.  I drizzled just a little over the tomatoes and it was one of the best tomato sandwiches I have had.

On a night when I would have had typical veggie burgers, last night I made rosemary roasted potatoes, macaroni & not-cheese and baked beans.  The baked beans gave me a slip as I typically fry soy crumbles to add a bit of texture to the beans but of course, that’s soy so I had to brainstorm for a bit until I realized I had bought Sunshine Burgers on my soy free grocery run.  I crumbled a burger and fried it with a diced onion to add to the beans and they turned out perfect.  I had a few ingredient substitutions to make in other places but everything turned out great.

The milk issue is still on the drawing board.  I have found that Pacific almond milk seems to be a bit less watery than Almond Breeze and has less of the afterbite I’m not fond of, it even foams a little better when I steam it for coffee.  I’m still planning on getting hazelnut milk when I run out of almond to see if I like it better.  I’m curious to see how the almond milk would taste in mashed potatoes where imparting an almond taste would be really bad.

I went through my stock of cooking supplies and noticed most contain soy.  I use a vegan Worcestershire sauce that contains soy, Vegenaise, as mentioned, contains soy, as do many of Asian cooking products and any sauces that I would make for an Asian dish.  I would like tofind some replacements for these, namely the Vegenaise and Worcestershire but I can easily do without these if I have to.  Besides, this is all about having to with out, right?

The first day of no soy consisted of a trip to the grocery store to find replacements for my typical vegan staples.  I replaced my soy milk that I use mostly for coffee with almond milk, which I am not a big fan of.  There’s something about that little bite it has that I don’t like and the watery consistency does not sit well with me.  I’ll need to try a different milk or maybe a brand other than Almond Breeze.  We picked up Soy-Free Earth Balance to use for baking, that shouldn’t be a big change  I found that so many things, as I expected, contained soy in some form.  While I didn’t plan on being able to remove every minute bit of soy from my diet I think I did a pretty good job of it.  Buying stuff at Trader Joe’s might be a task though as most of their items have soy protein or soybean oil somewhere in the list of ingredients.  Most items at Trader Joe’s are processed in some way and it seems soybean oil must be a necessary additive when doing so.

I managed to find veggie burgers without soy, Sunshine Burgers list just four ingredients and soy is not one. Amy’s California Burgers are also soy-free but I am not big on their flavor as they have far too much of a dirty mushroom taste.  I like mushrooms but I would rather just eat a big portaboello than have my veggie burger lend the flavor.

Day one, no change noticed, but it is only one day.  Do I really expect any change?  Probably none other than grumpiness due to the fact that I can’t have my usual goodies.

Go out to get a coffee and you’ll most likely have the options of whole milk, 2% milk, skim milk and soy milk.   Why do you never find rice milk, almond milk, or goat milk for that matter,  as a choice in your coffee?  I decided to get out of the soy milk rut at home with my coffee and picked up some rice milk.  I used Trader Joe’s Rice Drink from the refrigerated section to try first.  I always found rice milk to be watery and this was no exception.  It is also a bit on the sweet side which isn’t a bad thing considering a like my coffee sweetened, usually with a vanilla syrup I make myself.   Steaming rice milk doesn’t seem to work well if you like foam.  You seem to get a good foam started but it all breaks down to nothing as soon as it gets heavy.  The rice milk lends no flavor to the end drink, so for me it doesn’t work.  No foam, no flavor, no worky.

I also tried hazelnut milk from Pacific Foods.   The consistency is the same as rice milk but the flavor is a bit better.  Still, if you like foam this one doesn’t work.  I’m sure the watery formulas of these two are what lends to the lack of foam production during the steaming.

For now I will stick with soy milk but I will be trying others.  Oat Milk?  Hemp Milk?