Grandma's Sunday Smothered Pork Chops & Garlic Mashed Potatoes

Nothing says Sunday dinner like mashed potatoes & gravy with some sort of meat from the farm.  Unfortunately when we made the move to dairy free that meant no more milk, cream, and worst of all  butter.  So when it comes to making a Sunday meal of comfort food it can be somewhat difficult to get the desired result, especially the gravy.  Let's be honest what is mashed potatoes without the gravy?  The discovery of So Delicious brand unsweetened coconut milk has been a great substitute for the use of what we call in our house "cow's milk".  Also as a substitute for the fat that is in the butter we use is Wilderness Family Naturals expeller pressed coconut oil in our mashed potatoes.  These two products really make a nice flavorful mashed potato.  We have found these two items to be key in our search of a dairy free life.

In order to make our Sunday meal you will need the following:

6 oz boneless pork loin chop (1 per person)
1 tsp sea salt
1/2 tsp pepper
1/2 tsp cinnamon
2 Tbs coconut oil
1 bulb of garlic
Tin foil
Baby red potatoes (figure 2 per person)
1 Tbs flour (cornstarch for a gluten free approach)
Small drizzle of olive oil
1 package Monterrey mushrooms
2 1/2 cups So Delicious unsweetened coconut milk

1). To get started set your oven to 375, take your bulb of garlic and slice the root end (the big end) off the bulb.  Place on tin foil and drizzle with olive oil, wrap and place in the oven for about 25 min or until soft.

2). We need to get our chops going.  Take you chops and season with salt, pepper, and cinnamon on both sides of chops.

3). Place a hot skillet over medium heat and add the 1 Tbs coconut oil.  Sear the chops on both sides until golden brown and then place in the oven to finish cooking for 25 min.

4). Quarter your baby red potatoes and place in a pot of cold salt water (this will help your potatoes cook evenly).  Place your pot on medium-high heat and boil until potatoes are fork tender.

5).  Once pork chops are done take out of skillet and set aside on a plate.  Now comes the tricky part, making gravy.  With the remaining oil and drippings of the chop, place the warm skillet on a stove top over medium heat.  Slice the mushrooms and add them to the oil and drippings, saute them until cooked.  Be careful as the skillet will be hot  Sprinkle in the Tbs of flour over the sauteed mushrooms.  (This is what is going to make our gravy thick).

6).  Once the flour has been added whisk in 2 cups of coconut.  Continuously stir the coconut milk until it thickens, this should be about the time the milk comes to a boil.  Season with salt and pepper to taste.

7)  Drain your potatoes and add the garlic by squeezing it like a tube of toothpaste.  Also add 1 Tbsp.  of coconut or olive oil with the remaining 1/2 cup of coconut milk.  Mash together with a potato masher or with whip with a hand mixer until consistency that is desired.

8)  Spoon the mashed potatoes onto a plate, add the pork chop on the top, and spoon the mushroom gravy over the top and enjoy!


This is comfort food with a twist.  For those who love mashed potatoes and gravy this is a substitute that you would never know the difference dairy free or not!

A sweet summer surprise!

One tasty dessert that can often be missed when you aren't able to eat dairy products is ice cream.  There are some great products out there (coconut based is what we have always preferred) that you can just purchase and require no at home work.  This is what we have purchased for the majority of the past 2 years whenever I had an ice cream craving.  About a year ago I purchased an ice cream machine in the hopes to start making my own (when you make your own there are less ingredients and you have control over exactly what you are eating).  However after a few failed attempts I put the machine away and only recently took it back out.  We had been to a strawberry farm in July and picked/froze 18 pounds of strawberries with one of my hopes being that I could make strawberry ice cream with them (one flavor I haven't found in the store made coconut brands).  I thought the ice cream was amazing and my husband (who can still have regular ice cream) even gave it an 8.5/10!  Now that I have figured out the basics of ice cream making with coconut milk, I am excited to start trying other flavors and tweaking recipes to my liking.  Here is the recipe we used:

1.5 cups frozen strawberries

3 cups full fat coconut milk

2 tablespoons cornstarch

1.5 teaspoons vanilla extract

.5 cup agave

Pinch of sea salt

1) Begin by whisking the cornstarch into 1/2 cup of the coconut milk ensuring there are no clumps.  Don't forget to give the cans of coconut milk a good shake before opening to mix it up real well. 

2) Heat the rest of the coconut milk in a medium sauce pan until it just starts to form bubbles.  At this point you will add your agave, vanilla and sea salt while continuing to heat the mixture.  Next, slowly stir in the cornstarch mixture.  Continue to heat the mixture while stirring frequently (make sure not to boil the mixture) until the texture reaches what I have read others call a custard texture but to me looked like a runny pudding texture.  This mixture will now need to be chilled over night.  This is a good time to put the ice cream maker's freezer bowl into the freezer (our ice cream maker recommends freezing for 24 hours).

3). The next day start by putting your frozen strawberries (fresh is fine too, we just have a lot of frozen) into your food processor until smooth.

4) Pour your strawberries and coconut mixture into the ice cream maker and mix together using a spatula.  Follows the manufacturer's directions.  Ours took about 25 minutes and reached texture that was similar to soft serve ice cream.  You can eat right away or freeze in a separate sealed container for later (I thought the texture was best right away:-). Enjoy!

Where we have come from....Where we are going.

In January of 2012 my wife and I completed a 28 day detox with goals of losing a few pounds and cleaning up our diets.  After completing the detox, however, my wife noticed digestive symptoms after adding dairy back into her diet that she had never experienced before.  At the suggestion of her chiropractor, an IgG food intolerance test was done, and it was discovered that she had a dairy sensitivity.  At first the idea of taking dairy out of her (our) diets seemed very overwhelming.  It required us to become more creative in our meal plans.  Also, a lot of the substitutes for dairy (Shortening, Margarine, etc.)  contain trans fats that we have always looked to avoid.  There have been some bumps and struggles along the way, but after two years it has become second nature to find alternatives to dairy, as well as recipes that don't include dairy, but are still just as tasty.  We have found that we are still able to eat many of the things that we enjoyed prior to the detox, but with a little twist.  We hope to share these recipes with those of you who are struggling to find healthy alternatives in a dairy free diet and to continue to experiment and come up with new ideas!

With the addition of our daughter in May of 2014, we have also had to avoid the use of egg in many of the recipes that we try as she has shown a reaction to my wife eating anything with egg.  This has added a whole new aspect to how we meal plan and cook, but with our experiences, we welcome the challenge!