Old-fashioned sunday dinner minus dairy

Pot roast
2 lb of beef chuck roast
1 can condensed cream of mushroom
1/4 brown gravy mix (powder)
1 onion, sliced
Season the roast w/ salt and brown the roast on all sides. Mix the gravy mix and soup together. Put the onions and the roast into crock pot, and pour soup mix on top. Cook on low for 6 hours.

The sodium content of this roast is probably astronomical but it's fork tender, easy, and yummy!

Mashed potatoes
3 large yukon gold potatoes
3 russet potatoes
Rice milk
Margarine/spread

Peel the potatoes and dice in 1" chunks. Boil and simmer until soft. Drain. Add enough rice milk while mashing to desired consistency. Season w/ spread, salt and pepper.

This one was a bit of a challenge in trying to figure out the best combo of ingredients to achieve a creamy buttery mashed potato w/ neither cream nor butter. Rice milk was chosen as the dairy substitute since it was assumed to have a neutral flavor. As it turns out, it's slightly sweet, almost nutty in flavor but that was still a better choice than vanilla soy which is the only other milk sub I have in the house. Using the mix of potatoes was a good call since the yukon golds have a buttery texture in contrast to the fluffy but starchy russets. I think the lack of creamy dairy would have been more noticible in a russet-only mash.

And for the vegetables, baby got to try pureed real (frozen) peas tonight as opposed to the jarred babyfood variety. They were a rather bright green as opposed to the army green of gerber. He seemed to approve although in general he's getting a little upset w/ being spoonfed purees. I think I'm going to try a bit more baby-led foray into solids w/ some puree and choke-hazard-free finger food to see if he prefers that.

And as a final review from tonight's dinner, tofutti in a root beer float is vile. It doesn't actually blend w/ the root beer as it melts so you have a nasty foam of artificial vanilla flavor sitting atop the soda.