To eat dairy or no dairy

There’s a popular vegan argument: milk is meant for baby cows, not for people. The real basis for that is that no animal drinks the milk of other animals in the wild. No wild animal drinks milk as an adult.

Others think milk is disgusting, particularly me.

The only dairy products I will absolutely eat, are ice cream and cheese, and maybe whipped cream. Those are the only dairy products that I will absolutely recommend. Maybe also buttermilk pancakes. Is nougat a dairy product? I would eat that. Edit: What about pudding and French silk pie? The latter would be double chocolate silk cake pie or fudge brownie silk pie, maybe the former with fudge too.

I prefer dark chocolate, especially for ice cream, Twix, truffles, and Milky Ways. I don’t have as strong preference for dark chocolate in kit kats or plain chocolate bars.

Dark chocolate bars are ideally dairy free. But the popular Hershey’s and Dove darks are not. Poor quality dark chocolate has dairy, good-quality dark chocolate is dairy-free.

I am not a fan of 86% cocoa bittersweet chocolate. That’s dark chocolate going a little bit too far.

I might not desire to eat this this, but I recommend that people eat dark, semisweet, or bittersweet chocolate stuffed with milk chocolate.

I strongly prefer and recommend bittersweet cocoa powder for hot chocolate. I recommend either dairy, almond milk, cashew milk, or oat milk. I recommend the latter three over rice milk.

Dairy, where used, should be mixed goat and cow’s milk.

Milk balances out the bitterness of cocoa powder. I don’t know what ingredient, whether it’s lactose, but I think it’s either casein or butterfat or both. I think casein alleviates spicy taste, but I don’t know if it balances out astringency or bitterness. I think antioxidants like tannins are what give cocoa its bitterness.

You ought to have grape juice or wine with dark chocolate. I’m saying that sarcastically. They combine to make something even more harshly bitter and astringent.

Carob is a chocolate substitute. For just one thing, it doesn’t have theobromine (which is like one third as toxic to humans as to dogs), but there are other nutritional differences that make carob healthier. You may as well mix carob flour with cocoa powder. Other sweeteners I recommend besides sugar – erythritol, sorbitol, and monk fruit. Of course, zero-calorie isn’t always good.

For pizza, cheese should be mixed mozzarella, provolone, and some others. For garlic cheese bread, mixed mozzarella and cheddar and maybe parmesan and provolone would be good, and also stuff feta cheese.

I would prefer to avoid dairy in mashed potatoes unless maybe it was butter, cream, and/or asiago cheese. For mashed potatoes with beef gravy, soy milk or cashew milk might be good. For garlic mashed potatoes, olive oil, margarine, butter, and/or asiago cheese might be good.

I don’t like sour cream.

Margarine has more unsaturated and less saturated compounds than butter, that’s why it’s claimed to be healthier. But it often has trans fat which is the most unhealthy of the four types of fat. But margarine is not only claimed to be a healthy alternative to butter, but in some cases it’s a dairy-free alternative to butter even if it has a little bit of hydrogenated oils.

Preferred cuts by vegetable

Short on inspiration. But I will give the preferred cuts below:

Tomatoes: diced

Zucchini and summer squash: cubed

Bell peppers: thin slices or thick dices

Onions: minced.

Garlic: granulated and salted with iodized salt or sea salt.

Italian meal idea

Meatball and summer squash skillet, with four full links of uncured Italian sausage, multiple cubes of zucchini and yellow summer squash, thin slices of red and yellow peppers, dices of tomatoes, minced onions, and seasonings such as garlic powder, sea salt, and Italian herb seasoning. Don’t forget olive oil. Maybe classic olive oil as cooking oil, and extra virgin olive oil when the skillet is finished fresh hot.

Serve it on semolina spaghetti. Edit: could have penne, rotini, or ravioli instead, the latter of which should be stuffed with parmesan.

Side: garlic cheese bread, with mozzarella, Parmesan, provolone, and cheddar cheese on top, plus feta and spinach stuffed inside. Dip it in marinara sauce. Desire whole wheat or multi-grain for garlic cheese bread.

Have some Concord grape juice or red-purple wine to go with it.

Italian sausage should be either pork or wild boar on its own, or beef mixed with pork, lamb or hogget, and/or venison. Desire strings/strands of at least one meat and particles/grains of at least one other. Sausage Precooked to 160 Fahrenheit.

The beef could be either grass-finished or finished on a variety grains. See https://treehozz.com/what-is-beef-finishing and https://www.highlandcattleusa.org/content/Grain%20Finished%20Beef.pdf

Italian sausage would be desired to be roasted, broiled, braised, or hot-smoked. Could cook sausage in Big Steel Keg, horizontal offset smoker with tuning baffle plates, gas grill, Weber Smokey mountain, or LPG cabinet smoker. Mix wood and charcoal where possible.