A Note About Ingredients

I picked up the habit of replacing sifting flour with fluffing it prior to measuring. Basically run a spoon through it a few times, then spoon into the measuring cup and make sure you don't pack it down at all. It's a lot less messy than sifting.

There isn't a lot of consensus on just how bad dietary aluminum is, but I, personally, don't care for the taste of most Baking Powders, over and above possible health risks. Rumford and Featherweight both contain no aluminum. If your market doesn't carry it, a lot of health food stores do.

If you haven't figured it out from the recipes, I'm milk-allergic and lactose intolerant. If you are too, the following might be of interest.

My preferred stick margarine is Willow Run. Nucoa works, but the flavor isn't quite as good. Neither burns. Nucoa also produces a tub margarine which was a very nice bread spread and really amazingly low fat. I haven't seen it in a long time, tho. I currently buy Spectrum, with no trans-fat and at least some versions have flax seed oil. They also make a crisco-like, non-hydrogenated, trans-fat free bucket o' shortening that works okay for pies. It's palm based. Use at your own risk.

I generally use peanut oil for oil in baked-goods recipes. I like the peanut flavor, and it helps to compensate for the comparatively bland flavor of baked-goods which have had the butter, milk and cream removed. I use either rice milk or soy milk, depending on what I'm making. Soy milk can have a slightly beany flavor which is undesirable in sweets and baked goods. I often use vanilla flavored. The shelf-stable package has an expiration date on it that's months and months in the future, so you can buy by the case if it's hard to find.

I use Bob's Red Mill flours on the West Coast and King Arthur on the East Coast. I haven't spent a significant time cooking anywhere else.

Imagine Foods, in California, produces a wide variety of vegan and vegetarian products, including Creamy Portobello Mushroom soup, which I can use as a straight replacement for canned Cream of Mushroom soup. Who'd'a'thunk.

Galaxy Foods produces a Vegan Parmesan Cheese substitute that tastes quite shockingly like that stuff in the green container from Kraft. It doesn't taste like real parmesan, but nevertheless, it can be tasty sprinkled over an otherwise cheese free pizza, after you cook it. It won't melt or anything useful like that, so don't try to cook it.

This file recreated from The Internet Wayback Machine in January 2002. Copyright Rebecca Allen, 2002.

Updated: January 28, 2002