Nothing should taste like cardboard!

Have I mentioned that I love cheese yet?  I also love to eat and I love food that tastes good. Just to drive this point home let me share a blog with you that has become my recipe bible, The Pioneer Woman Cooks:

http://thepioneerwoman.com/cooking/category/all-pw-recipes/

I am not doing this to torture myself.  I would actually love to see this awesome blog get more attention, because she has some amazing recipes! But I also still fully intend to cook using her recipes and amazing step by step pictures. The only catch is that I'll have to make some alterations here and there to make them less dairy-tastic and meat-centric. Hopefully she doesn't disapprove!

Now I want to introduce my first secret weapon in the war on horrible tasting dairy free food.  As I try vegan style cooking I am not going to try to replace the real thing with the faux substitutes for the most part because I will just end up disappointed that they are not the real thing. I can think of nothing worse than wanting a juicy cheesy burger and biting into a dry course lentil patty with bland strangely textured soy cheese! But when you are cooking you still need a few key things to ensure success and I am sure as heck not going to try to bake, saute, or melt without something like butter.  Let's face it, butter makes everything better. It improves texture, flavor, and when used correctly can make grown men cry. Well it turns out butter is something that is more easily faked than probably any other dairy delight for us skeptics.

 Let's take it down for a moment so I can share a secret with you... I haven't been using real butter at home for the past few YEARS! I have actually been using something called Earth Balance instead.

This little yellow and ochre colored tub of goodness is vegan, gluten free, and even does your taxes for you.  I don't wanna know what else is in it that goes against some other study or factoid so please don't tell me.  I just want to enjoy the fact that I don't need butter to make it all better!

All this talk has made me hungry so I think I'm going to slather Earth Balance on something and stuff my face with it.  After that it's off to Trader Joe's to stock up on some essentials. My next post should be all about the first recipes I am going to dare.  Wish me luck!