Living with intention

The dairy-free lifestyle is all about living with intention. You may be living dairy-free because you choose the lifestyle for humanitarian reasons, or because you don't have a choice and are lactose intolerant or have an allergy. Either way it's a very intentional existence. Most people associate lactose intolerance and milk allergy as the same thing, but they are very much different things entirely. This ignorance becomes a serious problem when you're dairy-free because of a life threatening allergy, and so I find there is a great need for education and advocacy on the subject. My journey getting to the dairy-free lifestyle has been full of stark seriousness and the well-being of my child, and has had complexing discoveries that have shaped my perspectives toward everything. This road has taught me to think for myself and seek out my own truths. This concept seems pretty obvious, but it's amazing how little thinking people in general actually do. I've learned that living with intention is making informed and educated choices ALL of the time, and drawing independent conclusions by using your own gauge of conscience. 

Before learning to live with intention and living dairy free, I lived day to day just mulling around through life. Eating whatever I felt like, or what was immediately available and convenient. I chimed in on conversations from time to time, never really giving much thought to anything whatsoever. We (as a society) are led as a bunch of sheep be herded through life by the mass media sheep herder. Most people believe and take their knowledge from anything they see in black and white, online, or on TV. Mass media creates the ideals and opinions in their messages that will cause people to take action in a way that benefits the company campaigns. Profits tend to always trump truths and conscience. The way this works makes people never have to think for themselves. It sets the stage for what a healthy diet looks like in a commercial geared to amp sales and sell the lifestyle. Mass media does this with every aspect of our life from what we wear, where we grocery shop, and what brands we buy. Magic words like "healthy", "natural", and "good deal" are all a part of the psychological game to sell you products. Nobody really cares if things are in fact healthy, natural, or truly a good deal. There's another whole side of the business full of deceit and greed. Companies can get you to eat rat poison and arsenic using these magic words. In fact they do when they fill their products full of toxic chemicals and preservatives to make them seem more appealing to you, knowing that the sheep will follow the herd with some good communication tactics, selling the chemical diet in a pretty picture. Another thing I've noticed is the coupling of food with patriotism. Selling things as The American Diet. Basically processed junk packaged to make you feel like a good American. Companies know that you'll care about what they tell you to care about. It's simply not as profitable to tell you the truth. I'm a bit familiar with the selling game having obtained my degree in mass communication when I was still a sheep.

Living with intention changes everything in your life. Once you become intentional about some things, more things begin to matter. Suddenly your life is purposeful and you become one who leaves the herd and makes a difference by breaking the flow and making educated choices. I have some suggestions to those of you who want to live intentionally. Most importantly, don't base any choice or decision on anybody else's, even your own in the past. Start fresh and open your eyes and hearts to the the choices you make from this moment forward. You can start by being aware of how your actions and choices affect others. From sweatshop's that are manufacturing the clothing labels you desire, to asking if anyone has a food allergy before whipping out your bag of snacks for your kids at a public park shared by many kids, and their different cercumstances. This is the era of intentional effort and change. Every generation has some key people in it that leave the herd and make a difference and have made huge changes, even when everyone said they were crazy and it could never be done. The only thing that changes is the causes that require special attention and intentional efforts. I'd say the food allergy epidemic is at the top of the list! Not only because it can take a life in a matter of minutes, but because it's an epidemic that's growing exponentially and there is so much to be done.

Food allergies are not someone else's problem, they are everyone's problem. If you're aware of someone's food allergy, then you're responsible to act accordingly because you could be the reason their life ends. What a horrible thing and yet what a very possible thing that could happen. This can be by asking questions, changing your actions and becoming educated. The mindset that it doesn't affect you is selfish and ignorant. To not want to help a child when it would only require some thought is seriously disturbing, and a reminder of just how selfish and sheepish society has become. Many courses of action are necessary to change immediately. Proper food labeling is a must! Deciphering through 66 hidden ways milk can be present in 6 syllable chemical and preservative forms is unacceptable. Healthcare professionals that don't know the difference between lactose intolerance and a milk allergy is so beyond unacceptable that it's down right despicable. All of this injustice is motivational to the intentional mindset person like myself. I may just be a lone sheep who's fled the herd of ignorance, but I am not afraid to scream it from the rooftops until I see people take notice to life threatening food allergies. Not everyone is an intentional thinker and will make much of a difference in this world, I hope to be one that does. The holiday season is full of room for ignorance, because basing traditions on the past without consideration of the present is illogical and uneducated. Making it intentional keeps it fun and safe for everyone because that's the spirit of Christmas. When this ignorance and selfishness begins to separate family and friends, and that's not enough to cause change, then it becomes terribly sad and disturbing. When food trumps family and friends, you begin to seriously fear the future for your child. It also motivates the heck out of your mission to advocate and educate, and make your own safe environments filled with people who make the effort and support the cause. 

Here's a cute Santa idea with brownies. I used coconut yogurt ( vanilla flavored)  and a mix of No Pudge Fudge brownie mix and some added coconut whipped cream.

Add a strawberry stuck on with coconut whipped cream. 

The directions for coconut whipped cream: crack open a can of full fat coconut milk and refrigerate overnight. Scoop out cream and add 1/2 c. confection sugar and whip. I used a Nutribullet. Then refrigerate and add more confections sugar as needed to firm it up. Put together with strawberry. Voila! Darling little dairy free Santa brownies. Intentional efforts make the greatest gifts. 

Let me introduce myself...

My journey to a dairy-free lifestyle has been a miraculous, windy, and life changing road. I didn't come into this lifestyle on my own accord, but I have certainly remained here because of it. My oldest daughter is severely allergic milk, and by the age of two we realized that our home needed to be completely without any form of milk to protect her well-being. After extreme efforts to do so I uncovered 66 magic words on food labeling that actually mean milk. Ingredients like "lactic acid", which can be found in a simple fruit juice, and "caramel coloring" found in things like deli style meats, can really throw your brain for a loop. Everything logically containing milk only scratches the surface of what actually contains milk. For this reason, most everyone is completely clueless when it comes to what they put into their mouth, and are completely incapable to assist in providing protection to our daughter. I hear a lot of "there's cow's milk in meat!?", or other seemingly abnormal places to find milk. The answer is YES,  and you basically need a PHD in deciphering food labels to know that information. I don't make the rules, the ingredients, or the justifications about why on earth our food supply is so soaked in milk, but it is, so I lend my voice to educate others about it. My daughter is so severely allergic that these milder renditions (or secret 66) of milk can send her into anaphylactic shock, and require that I be very knowledgeable when it comes to knowing where milk can be found, and disguised as, to keep my precious girl safe.

The early dairy-free stage was mind boggling! Everywhere I looked I saw milk. It was overwhelming and frustrating, and it really opened my eyes to the inferior food quality in the mainstream American diet. Company's are cutting costs by sharing conveyor belts and manufacturing plants, pumping livestock full of toxic components for higher yielding profits, and feeding those toxic animal biproducts to the public. They are then collecting on the increased healthcare component of toxic, chemical enriched diets. People are getting sicker than ever! Food Allergies have risen 200% in the past decade, and healthcare is now unaffordable to the average Joe! I know none of this is ground-breaking news, but to me it was. I lived in a state of ignorant bliss. I chose foods I ate based on their taste, never giving any thought to an ingredient, a manufacturing plant, and the hopped up cow that the dairy I was consuming came from. As if the dairy allergy epidemic isn't enough evidence, here's two more reasons to rethink why (if you're not already) you should be dairy free:
1.) Why are we still consuming breast milk past infancy?
2.) Today's cows are complete junkies and we're eating their drugs!

I've made this analogy before in my blog 365dayswithafoodallergy@blogspot.com that breastfeeding (human) mothers are very careful not to consume alcohol or medications when nursing their young. We even limit mild things like caffeine, but we have no problem consuming the toxic chemicals that cows are fed like growth hormone and antibiotics (neither of which are FDA approved and are considered illegal for human consumption). We feed this straight toxic potion to our babies when they turn one when we switch them to a sippy cup of cow's milk. We are so programmed by probably THE best marketing campaign ever, "Got Milk", that we literally think life without it is a sacrifice and hardship. People truly believe that not consuming milk is detrimental to your health! Wow, the powers of advertising are unreal. The only hardship is trying to get away from it! As far as a sacrifice, there are so many plant-based options for everything these days that I feel a little bit sad for people who let marketing campaigns form their opinions, and not their own research. Hey, if you want to eat a fistful of chemicals be my guest, but don't pity us for choosing not to do so.

There's also another school of thought from the baby boomer generation and earlier generations. That milk is good and wholesome and they were raised on it and they're fine,  so why are the newer generations making such a big deal about it? The difference is this: Baby boomers were raised on organic produce and dairy, and it was wholesome. During the depression and earlier when the country was going hungry and women weren't able to produce breast milk, cows milk was a good alternative to feed their hungry babies. Coming into the baby boomer reproduction years, it had become unfashionable and socially unacceptable to breast feed. This was the era of woman's rights and somehow a woman's God given ability to nurse her own young was barbaric and old school.  Cow's milk became the go-to for human babies as well as calfs. By the early 80's the dairy industry decided to make the US cow population responsible for all calf AND human nursing needs, and pumped them full of toxic chemicals to make them overproduce, so the companies could profit off this unnatural act of drinking another mammals milk. No consideration of the detriment to the health of cows and their inability to even walk with this unnatural added udder weight. No one ever considered that these living creatures weren't meant to feed humans, and that there would be drastic scientific ramifications for human greed.

My youngest daughter doesn't have the milk allergy so I hear a lot of pity going her way. "Poor thing has to go without milk because of her sister's allergy." Can I just say that perspective is gross. If things were reversed and my youngest was my oldest, and we didn't enter into parenthood with a food allergy mindset,  I'm sure we would have succumb to the dairy path for her. Now, I thank God for the wisdom I have gained and that I have never subjected my youngest to anything milk related. I'm positive this will pay off down the road for her health and the health of her offspring. She is healthy, in the 90th percentile, she eats every vegetable I give her, drinks my juicer concoctions daily with spirulina and chia seeds, and has NEVER been sick, had an ear infection, strep, nada! Pitying her is just plain ignorant--she's getting an A+ diet and a healthy perspective about food. And introducing the mindset to be resentful toward her sister because of her food allergy disability is, again, gross! I won't make excuses for ignorant people even though I'm constantly expected to so.

The severe, anaphylactic milk allergy that my oldest has is not thought to be something she will outgrow. In fact, they think it will continue to progressively get more sensitive. I have no plans to turn back to milk and only plan to forge forward with my own unique recipes and lifestyle wisdom. We live with intentional efforts, strong bonds, and respect for ourselves and our bodies, and the bodies of other creatures of God. That is why I created Dairy-Free Darlings so we could share our story, our mission, recipes, and lifestyle with anyone else who wants to (or already is) traveling this path, and wants to share in our kindred spirit.

I'll end this post with a sweet treat for the Darlings in your life!

My Darling Little Crispy Recipe: Free of Dairy, Nut (except coconut), Gluten, Soy, Egg (obviously)

1 TBS Coconut oil
1/2 package of natural, organic marshmallows
1/2 box of Erewhon Honey Crisp Brown Rice with Mixed Berries
1 TBS shelled Hemp seeds
1 TBS chia seeds

In a large sauce pan melt coconut oil. Add marshmallows and stir until melted. Turn off heat. Add Honey Crisp Brown Rice With Mixed Berries and stir well. Add Chia and Hemp seeds and keep stirring. Pour concoction into pan and press down to flatten the top. Put in refrigerator for one hour. Take out then cut into squares and leave out for 15 minutes before serving (they will be hard because of the coconut oil). Voila- a healthier kick on a childhood favorite. Free of high fructose corn syrup and gluten--two things that will wind your little darlings up. Also, a decent serving of vitamins and minerals including calcium and magnesium, with a dash of protein.