Product: MimicCreme

Last week I went to Maryland. While I was there, I saw a cute looking organic grocery store, MOM's Organic. So of course I just had to pop in there and investigate.

I found a few products they don't stock at my local markets, so I purchased some of them. One of those products is something called MimicCreme. It is a nut-based cream alternative, and the package says it can be used anywhere you'd use cream. This really piqued my interest, since I have always been a dairy lover and that is one of the things that we both came up highly sensitive to. (Oh cheese and yogurt, how I miss you!)

So anyway, I cracked the package a couple of days ago. The first thing I did was add about a teaspoon to a bowl of cereal with almond milk. (I find the mouthfeel of almond milk isn't right for cereal; it's too thin for my taste, so I had given up cereal for breakfast.) The MimicCreme gave the almond milk that extra dairy milk-like quality that had been missing, without adding a weird flavor. I was very pleased!

Next, I tasted it straight up. Some people might think that's weird or gross, but I used to drink the little half and half cups they give you for coffee at a restaurant, so it was no big deal for me. Like I said, I really love dairy! Anyway, I felt I needed to taste it plain so that I could ensure I wouldn't try to make something with it where the undertones of the creme clashed with the dish.

It does taste of almonds and cashews, but the flavor is mild enough that combining it with almost anything I can think of would mask the nuttiness.

Last night I made rice pasta florentine with it. It came out really well and is definitely something that will be added to the menu plan. Tonight I plan to use it as a base for homemade ranch salad dressing. It really is fantastic stuff!

So yes, I highly recommend MimicCreme!

http://www.mimiccreme.com/

rice pasta

It's been almost a month since my last post. Wow!

Today's post will not be some long critique of a product or even a recipe. It's just a simple tip.

When preparing rice pasta, rinsing it with cool water at the end of the cooking process is crucial:

I've been eating rice pasta for several years. Prior to the food sensitivity testing, I knew that eating wheat in excess gave me problems, so I tried the different rice pastas over the years. Thank goodness they've improved!

One of the things I never liked about rice pasta is that it gets mushy if you cook it according to the cooking time on the package. I was raised around people who knew what good Italian food was, and 'al dente' is imperative for decent pasta.

But I digress. It never occurred to me to read the package on the rice pasta beyond the cooking time. After all, it's pasta- just dump it into the boiling, salted water, cook it till it's done, drain it and sauce it. Right?

WRONG!

I was waiting for the noodles to cook the other night and reading the package to pass the time, when I noticed that it instructs you to rinse the noodles after cooking. Since I was only cooking for myself, and I don't mind my noodles being cold, I decided to do it.

I was absolutely delighted to find that my pasta, which was quite mushy prior to rinsing, firmed up after the cool water rinse!

I don't know the 'why's or the 'how's, but I do know that I will not be skipping that last step again anytime soon!