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Cashew Ricotta, Cream, Mozzarella, and Garlic Cheese Recipe

The problem with vegan cheese (and a lot of allergy free food) is that the manufacturers ignore that their ingredients start with a slightly different taste profile than the originals. Instead of working with those different tastes to create a unique foodstuff you can use as a “cheese”, they just bodge right through and declare that the finished product is tastes just like cheddar cheese when at its best it tastes like plastic and at its worst it tastes like cardboard. I had given up on dairy free cheese until I learned about cashew “cheese.” The thing that makes this dairy free vegan cheese recipe work is that it plays into the flavor of the cashews, adds a hint of nutty cheese flavor with nutritional yeast and the slight cheese tang with lemon juice. Cashew cheese doesn’t taste like a traditional dairy cheese (or plastic sawdust vegan cheese) but a unique flavor that allows you to do cheesy things with it. This cashew cheese recipe is very versatile. You can use it to make

8 Days of Pumpkin

I did it! My pumpkin dog treat project was more budget than lazy, and it took eight days to do it, but I turned our three Halloween pumpkins into dried pumpkin dog treats and pumpkin powder to mix into Lacey's food.


Three Pumpkins Before


Three Pumpkins After



It is hard to believe that three big pumpkins dehydrated to four mason jars. Although it is nice to not to have a ton of jars to store since I don't have a lot of storage space in my kitchen.

This project took so long because I had to do it bit by bit. I spent a Saturday baking the pumpkins and let them cool overnight. I went to town for four hours chopping the baked pumpkins the following day and loaded my dehydrator with the first batch of pumpkin to dehydrate overnight. The following day and every day after, I unloaded dehydrated pumpkin from the dehydrator in the morning and loaded it with fresh pumpkin later in the day to dehydrate overnight. Rinse. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat.

Lacey sat by my side every day while I worked. I know it is because she loves me and had nothing to do with Lacey hoping pumpkin will fall onto the kitchen floor.


 Actually, it has EVERYTHING to do with hoping pumpkin falls onto the floor!

I'm keeping two jars of dried pumpkin flakes to use as pumpkin dog treats. The rest of the dried pumpkin I ran through the blender. That way I can mix the powder into Lacey's kibble as a training aid. 

If I want to bake Lacey treats with pumpkin puree, I can rehydrate the dehydrated pumpkin by adding two cups of water to a half a cup of dried pumpkin to make 2 cups of pumpkin puree.

While all of this work was for Lacey, Husband and I got to enjoy a bit of fresh pumpkin too. I used the seeds to make baked pumpkin seed snacks.


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