Vegan Day 21: Got Milk?

When I was mulling over my vegan conversion, the milk issue was one of the biggest things to deal with. I have two growing boys and the milk they drink (a cup and a half in the morning and a cup and a half in the evening) in a week equals about about two gallons. If Mark drinks any or if I use any for cooking, now we are up to three gallons a week. Wasn't other types a milk expensive? How could I get my kids to switch when they obviously really liked cow's milk? I finally decided to try some in a baking recipe. Soy milk just sounded really gross, so I decided to start with almond milk. There were so many choices! Regular, regular unsweetened, vanilla, chocolate...yikes! I think I started out with unsweetened and it was fine. I have since branched out (see picture above). Almond milk is pretty mild, but does taste like almonds. Soy milk isn't bad. It is actually thicker and richer than almond milk, but it does have a distinct taste. The problem is if you use soy milk in coffee, and oatmeal, and corn bread, etc, etc I tend to get soy-ed out. What I figured out is that I like to have different kinds. I get chocolate soy milk for the boys. For me, I get unsweetened almond to use in baking and vanilla sweetened almond to use in coffee and smoothies. If you are wondering is this milk expensive, the answer is, well, yes. A gallon of regular milk is around $3.39 ish and a half gallon of the non-dairy is about $2.50. The good thing is that you do tend to use less, it goes on sale, and there are coupons.