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Hi there, Toi here. We’re going to be talking about cheese today.

And to be honest, it’s probably not the last time we’re going to talk about cheese. But the quick meal video that I’ve put out recently is me making just one of many versions of non-dairy cheese., so let, let let me, let me talk about why I consume non-dairy cheese. There are lots of reasons why a person might choose not to consume dairy.

So, for all of you haters out there who get mad at anyone who eats a cheese that doesn’t come from a lactating mammal, calm down. Relax. What people choose to eat, or what people sometimes have to eat is no bearing on you whatsoever. You can eat all the dairy cheese that you want. No one’s going to stop you. No one’s going to take it from you. But let the other people, including myself. Let’s just let us do our thing. Okay, so I adore cheese. And I also used to really adore milk. I was one of those people. I was I was going to say kids, but I did it even as an adult. So, I was one of those people who used to drink milk, like just drink it. It was one of my beverage options. There was water, there was milk, there was juice. You know, like I used to just drink milk. But, back in my twenties, there was a concern about the cholesterol or the fat or something like that in the milk. And so I made the switch way back then, to not drink dairy milk, but I still consumed dairy products for the next, you know, twenty years or so.

The reason why I’ve gotten to the point where I just can’t handle dairy anymore. I want to be clear that I’m not lactose intolerant. I’ve never been lactose intolerant. My husband is lactose intolerant, and that joker still eats cheese from time and gets an upset tummy and has to go to the bathroom anyway. So, I the thing is, because I probably have gone so long without consuming dairy now, it probably would upset my son if I had it now just because my body’s not used to consuming it. But I was never lactose intolerant, so that’s not the reason that I’m dairy free. I’m also currently not currently living like a plant based or vegan lifestyle. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with either of those lifestyles., with all of my restrictions, I just felt like adding that on it would just be an additional restriction. And so, that’s not the reason either, although that’s a very valid reason.

So, if you happen to be lactose intolerant, that’s a very good, valid reason to not consume dairy products if you happen to be plant based or vegan. Very good. Valid reason not to consume dairy. Okay, now here is the reason that I no longer consume dairy. Now, I want to be clear that this is me. This is my experience. Not every person is the same. So don’t go dairy free because I went dairy free. And don’t be telling people that I told you had to do this or that or the other. I hope you are making decisions based upon your own research. You’re speaking to a professional, a doctor, a dietitian nutritionist, something, an elimination diet, something. But for me, dairy became a problem for two reasons. So, number one, I have, lots of just general digestive issues. And even though, I’ve never been lactose intolerant, my digestion has been kind of slowing down. It’s getting harder for me to process things. And so, foods that have a high fat content, I have to be concerned about my digestive system struggles with digesting or processing fat point blank. So that doesn’t mean that I have to be on a fat free diet. That’s not what it means at all. But I do have to be concerned about how much fat I’m consuming. And so, the reason why dairy becomes a factor in that is that a lot of dairy products, have a lot of fat in them. That’s not to say that I couldn’t eat those things and maybe reduce my fat somewhere else. You see what I’m saying?

So, like, it would still be possible for me to consume dairy if it was just the fat, but it would be a little bit more challenging. So, for instance, let’s say you have a burger, and you put a slice of cheese on it. I might have to take half that slice of cheese, shred it up. So spread it around a little bit. So bit, so I’m still kind of giving that effect to get less amount of fat, if that makes sense. So, it’s just a little bit more work in order for me to consume the dairy without having too much fat because I am still getting fat from other sources. That burger probably has some fat in it too. So, I have to be thinking about where my fat is coming from, and by eliminating dairy that helps me control my fat a whole lot better. And I have more choices about other places where I can get fat., if you, followed when I was on doing my, like, food updates on my Toy Thomas channel, I used to talk about how if I have to choose between, I think it was like cheese and bacon. I would choose the bacon.

I do not eat bacon every day. I don’t even eat it every week. But when I do want to consume it, I just I just want to enjoy it. I don’t want to have to worry about is it is my stomach going to have trouble digesting it? And that’s the choice that I’ve made. So, you don’t have to make that choice. This is the choice that I’ve made. Now, fat isn’t my only concern. Another concern that I have with dairy. And some people have the same concern. Most people don’t. So again, don’t be coming at me. For some people, dairy affects their inflammation. Now studies. Some studies have shown that, high quality dairy products should not affect inflammation. And for me and for a lot of people, it doesn’t. But for me, if I’m consuming a lot of dairy, like, I guess I don’t know what the typical serving is, but let’s say we’re talking glasses of milk. Let’s say one eight-ounce glass of whole milk is your, you know, standard dairy consumption. If I were to just have that, I don’t think it would affect my inflammation too much. But let’s be honest, especially if you’re living in the United States, you’re not having one eight ounce serving of dairy a day. You’re probably having more than that.

And so, if I’m having more than that, it can affect my inflammation. I can swell, I can feel itchy or, you know, get rashes and things like that. Not from the dairy itself. It just makes me that more susceptible to the other types of inflammation that I already suffer from. So that’s one another reason, and the last and final reason why I finally had to cut out the dairy is because. I like breathing. Now let me explain. I had really, really bad asthma as a kid. As an adult, I’ve mostly grown out of a lot of my asthma symptoms. I do have some of the lasting residual effects, seasonal allergies, skin sensitivities, eczema. So, I have a lot of the residuals that come from, you know, an early child development with asthma. So, with that said, I also have, you know, nasal issues, ear issues, you know, just a lot of these, these, these things that are all connected. Ear, nose and throat. You know how it goes.

I remember a doctor telling me once, and these are not his exact words, so I am not quoting, but this is just me remembering as best as I can. He said something to the effect that if the average American’s nasal passage is blue, and a person who has a really bad like nasal infections is red, yours is purple or pink, like it’s somewhere in between blue and red. And he’s like. And the doctor was like, that’s just how it is all the time. And so, at that point, the doctor presented me with, of course, you know, getting allergy shots or putting me on a medication regimen. I chose the medication regimen, and it was it was getting me by. And the truth is, when you’ve lived with something for so long, you don’t know any different. And so, when I started toying with the idea of going dairy free, I just started, you know, writing down the different things to see what I noticed. I didn’t really know, like how if it was really going to make a difference or not, I was all really just expecting to find out that cutting out the dairy had no change in my life whatsoever, and I was going to continue eating dairy.

But what I found out was I was living in a constant state of congestion. I did not know what it felt like to not be congested. I remember one day I took a deep breath, and I got lightheaded because I wasn’t used to being able to take a deep breath and have it be like, so clear and just be air coming into my nose. And I was like, whoa, what is that? That’s what it feels like to take a deep breath and not be congested. I know it probably sounds crazy, but that was my reality and that’s what I was experiencing in that moment. It had to be. I think it was the second week of me charting, having not had any dairy, just in the second week, and I was like, wait a second, is it like I was breathing and like, this. Even right now, as I’m saying these words out loud, like there was a time where this would feel different and it’s not something I can really describe. I just know that it feels different, like I am breathing without anything interfering with that. And that’s all due to no longer consuming dairy. So that’s my story. That’s my journey. It doesn’t have to be yours. It may not be yours, but if it is, these are just some choices, some things that you can consider.

So, I’m not going to drag this out too much further. Let’s talk about this particular version of non-dairy cheese that I’m making., the first thing I want to say is that, you know, people have different restrictions. And so, if you, you know, search, you know, non-dairy or vegan or plant-based cheese online, you’ll get so many, so many. So, you really kind of have to do your own research and figure out like what your preferences are, what your restrictions are. There are a lot of nut free recipes out there for people who have sensitivity to nuts. And I’ve tested out some of those, and I do have one of those that I keep on hand in case I’m going to be making a non-dairy cheese for someone that I know is nut free. But because it’s not an issue for me when I’m making my preferred non-dairy cheese just for my consumption, it has nuts in it. So, there are little things like that. I want to say one more thing before I get into my recipe. So, this is a recipe that I have been inspired by other content creators who, you know, put their recipes out there. They’ve been so helpful to me in my journey with food. And so, there’s one thing though, and I think this is more I see this more with the plant based,, influencers and content creators is that they tell you that when you want to create your non-dairy cheese, that the secret ingredient is nutritional yeast. And that’s not Are entirely true.

Yes, you absolutely will need nutritional yeast if you are going to try to make a non-dairy cheese. But that’s not the secret ingredient for me. What I have found and again, everyone is different, so test it out for yourself. What I have found the secret ingredient to making a non-dairy cheese that actually tastes like cheese is that you’re going to need nutritional yeast. You’re going to need an acid and you’re going to need some type of umami. Those are the three things that you’re going to need nutritional yeast and acid and umami. And I’m going to talk about that in just a moment. So, I think what this boils down to is that once you start, you know, changing up your diet and once you’ve been eating a certain way for so long, you forget what other stuff like tastes like. Like you forget how sweet sugar really is if you go without eating real sugar for so long. And if you haven’t had real like dairy cheese for so long, you forget what the real dairy cheese tastes like. So, I’ve been having been doing this long enough to where I’ve forgotten what it tastes like. And so, I’m trying to get as close to that as possible. But I also recognize that my palate has also changed in the process of me doing this. That’s another thing that if you are starting out the journey and you’re like, it doesn’t taste exactly like cheese to me. Give it a couple of weeks it will, or keep working on your recipe, until you get it to where you want it.

So here we go. So, for this recipe, that, that is going to that’s appearing in my quick meal short, I use, I think either a cup or half a cup. I don’t have the measurements, I’ll figure it out later, but I use cashews now. Cashews is really what helps give you, like, that really creamy texture when you’re making a nondairy cheese and you and you are allowed to use nuts. Now if you’re not using nuts, I’ll talk about one of those recipes later. Now if you have like a high-speed blender or really, you know, good processor or something like that. And I’ve seen lots of content creators just take their raw cashews and put it straight into their device and just blend it up, and they are good to go. I don’t have it like that just yet. Maybe one day I’ll be able to have it like that. So, I typically have to boil my cashews to be able to get them to blend down smoothly, to be able to mimic cheese. And so, since I know I’m going to have to boil them anyway, I choose to kind of, put all of my ingredients in together.

So, I have a basic yellow cheese that I make and a basic white cheese that I make. My white cheese recipe is a little bit different, so I’ll do that one another day. I’m doing my basic yellow cheese recipe. I like to use chickpeas in this recipe. Some people will think that’s absolutely crazy, but this is me, not you. So, you do you. Again, if I’m making the chickpeas from scratch, which I really do try to do but sometimes, you know, life gets busy and I’m using a can. I am going to take that can which those chickpeas are technically cooked . I’m going to take that can and I’m going to rinse those very well to get all of the can off of them. And I’m going to put them in there with my cashews and boil them. I want them to be super soft. I’m probably going to put about a fourth of a teaspoon of baking soda in that boiling water, so that those cashews and those chickpeas get really good and soft, to break down any I think it’s flavonoids or whatever it is. I want that to just be mush when it goes into my cheese concoction. Now, because I’m making my basic yellow cheese recipe, I’m also going to throw in a good-sized carrot. If you’ve only had like little bits of carrot, you’ll have to, kind of, measure out like how much you want. The carrot does two things., one, it adds a nice,, color to the cheese that you’re making. and believe it or not, cooked carrot without, you know, any seasoning. It adds kind of a little bit of a butteriness to it. I know it sounds crazy. I’ve done the recipe without it thinking I didn’t really need it, and I was like, mm, darn it, I do miss the carrot. So yeah, I do put in a good-sized carrot in with the nuts and the chickpeas and I and I just boil it until that carrot is super soft. And that’s how I know it’s ready to be drained and go into my food processor.

So that is the base. From that I’m going to add half a cup of nutritional yeast. Now remember I said nutritional yeast is absolutely necessary, but it’s not the secret. You’re also going to need an acid and you’re going to need umami. Now, I have seen other content creators and influencers say that you can alternate between lemon juice and apple cider vinegar. No, that does not work for me. Maybe it works for other people. Everybody’s palate is different when I have tried to make these recipes with apple cider vinegar. It did not taste like cheese to me, so I use lemon juice. Fresh squeezed is the best. However, you can also use the little squeezy like concentrate if that’s what you have on hand. I know a lot of people online will say you can only use fresh squeezed. I’m all about meeting people where they are. If you can get the little concentrate from the store, that’s what you have access to. That’s what you can afford. You do you. Sometimes I’m too lazy to do the citrus. I will, I will say one more thing real quick. It’s not always that I’m lazy. I am actually sensitive to citrus. Like when I touch it, it burns my skin. So, sometimes I don’t want to burn my skin, sometimes I do, sometimes I don’t, so I use what I can use. So, I use lemon juice in my recipe. So nutritional needs and lemon juice is the acid and then the umami.

Let me give you a couple of options here. I prefer to use white miso paste. Now white miso paste is fermented soybeans, so if you are soy sensitive you may not want to use the white miso. You have options., you can use tamari, which still has soy in it, but it doesn’t have gluten. Or you could use coconut aminos, which is not soy or gluten. So. you could use that as your umami in place of the white miso. But I really like using the white miso in mine. Now from there I’m going to add about half a teaspoon of turmeric. You don’t want to add too much turmeric. A little bit of turmeric goes a long way in this recipe. It’s just for the color. But if you add too much to it, your cheese is going to taste like turmeric, so make sure you just are adding enough for the color. So, the balance between the turmeric and the carrot will give you that nice cheesy color that you’re looking for. Anytime I put turmeric in something, I’m also going to put a little bit of black pepper. If you don’t want to put that in there, you don’t have to. But I usually will put about half a teaspoon of black pepper.

If you feel like, you know, please taste your stuff as you’re making it. Don’t just put it all in and at the end see what you have. Taste it to see kind of what when you when you start to blend it. Let me say that when you start to blend it, it’s okay to like just taste it a little bit to see, “Oh, you know what? I think that needs a little bit more salt,” because the nutritional yeast and the whatever umami you’re using already probably has salt in it. I don’t recommend adding salt to it unless you feel it needs salt., depending upon I think sometimes the density of what I’m making, I do end up adding an additional fourth teaspoon of salt to mine, but just salt it as much as you feel like it needs. So just taste it and see if it doesn’t need more salt, then don’t add more salt.

Now once you have that I also like to add a little bit of a thickener to it because it might be kind of watery. And depending upon what I’m going to do with this base, if I’m going to be using this as a cheese sauce, like I’m not going to try to solidify it into a block or anything, I’m going to add a tablespoon of cornstarch. If I’m going to be trying to turn this into a block, I’ll use tapioca starch, but I’m not doing that in the video that I’ve posted. I’m just making it into a cheese sauce. So, all of this stuff is going into the blender. I’m also going to be adding half a cup of plant-based milk of my choice of my choosing. For this, I like to use either soy milk or pea milk because it gives me additional protein. Like if I was eating real dairy cheese, there would be more protein in it., but if, you know, again, if you’re soy sensitive, pea milk is probably your best choice. But if you’re not worried about the protein content, you want something really creamy., oat milk could be really good. Oat milk is super creamy, but it’s also thick on the carbs, so just keep that in mind. And then lastly, what I do, again, to thin this out because, I’m turning this into a cheese sauce, is add about half a cup of the water that the nuts and you know, the beans and the carrot had been like boiling in. I reserve half a cup of that and that goes into the food processor. Everything gets blended up.

I put it into containers, stick it in the refrigerator. I usually make a lot of it at one time, so some of it goes into the freezer so I can have it later. But that’s my basic cheese sauce. If I was going to be turning this into a block at some point, I’d be adding some agar agar. But that’s a video for another day. So, like I said, I make my own non-dairy cheese now and I breathe really well. My tummy feels really well. And you know, sometimes I miss regular cheese, but the longer and longer I keep making my own cheese and I get to cater it to my flavor palette. It’s I mean, it is what it is. I made a banging mac and cheese for Thanksgiving. So, there you have it, guys. I would love to know some of your stories, some of your recipes, some of your journey. Why do you eat the things you eat or not eat some of the things you eat? Have you ever tried to make a non-dairy? Like anything, whether it’s a non-dairy cheese or maybe a non-dairy butter or something, I would love to know. Until next time guys. Stay safe and be blessed.

Credits:

Knauthentic number five starring Toi Thomas. Featuring no one else at this time. Topics discussed: Quick meals, non-dairy cheese, Knowing your flavor palate. Produced by Toi Thomas in association with The ToiBox of Words and Lit Carnivale. Directed by Toinette “Toi” Thomas. Thanks again to the authentic community on Substack and YouTube. This is all for you!

Content below is for recipe execution.

1 can beans

1/2 cashews

1 large carrot

1/2 cup nutritional yeast

2 tbsp white miso

2 tbsp lemon juice

1/2 tsp activated Hing

1/2 tsp turmeric

1/2 tsp black pepper

1/4 tsp salt

1 tbsp cornstarch/Tapioca starch

1/2 cup plant-based milk

1/2 cup soaking water, or more as needed

Directions:

1. Boil the beans, nuts, and carrot until the carrot is mushy. Add optional ¼ teaspoon of baking soda and a bay leaf to the water. Reserve a cup of the water (use as needed for texture).

2. Placed boiled contents in a food processor or blender and mix to a fine chop.

3. Add all other ingredients and mix until desired texture achieved.

4. Store in air-tight containers. Freeze any that won’t be consumed within 3-5 days. Leave in refrigerator overnight to thaw.

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