When I was in college, I discovered I was lactose intolerant.

Let me tell you, that first glass of (Lactaid) milk after so many years, like mana from heaven! It was so good and wonderful and comforting, I was in heaven. One of my favorite meals is a PB&J (smooth peanut butter and strawberry jam) on toasted white bread with an ice cold glass of strawberry milk, oh my goodness! So, after years of not being able to drink milk, ahhhh…the angels wept, the heavens sang, ok, eye roll!

Milk wasn’t the only thing I couldn’t have and the substitutes have been great, allowed me to enjoy certain things again. Then, years later, I developed an allergy to Lactaid milk, great. Moving on to soy milk, terrific, now, I’m allergic to soy milk, what? I can have soy products, no problem, but a glass of soy milk, my mouth gets all itchy, even Benadryl doesn’t help, great…

Interestingly enough, I can’t have Lactaid milk, but Breyer’s ice cream came out with a Lactaid free vanilla ice cream, O M G! It’s terrific! I’ve also had coconut milk ice cream, not bad, along with Rice Dream and Almond Milk ice cream, all good. Besides, put enough “stuff” on it, you can’t tell!

Now, I love rice or almond milk on cereal, soy milk was great, obviously I can’t have that anymore, but put one of the others on cereal, especially vanilla flavored, Y U M! The thing is those milks are sweeter than regular milk, so if you put this on sugared cereal, be prepared! The sweeter”fake” milk is great on non-sweetened cereal, like Special K, stuff like that, gives it a little extra something.

As great as those substitutes are, they not that great or the same as a tall glass of milk with something sweet, like cake or cookies. I can’t believe I’m saying this and I’m sure some of you are thinking the same thing…it’s too sweet! Yes, the girl who likes some tea with her sugar, uber sweet Shirley temples is saying that the imitation milks are too sweet to have with sweet desserts! What? Say it isn’t so…it is.

So, as much as I would like to have that tall glass of strawberry milk or just an ice cold glass of milk, maybe with a sweet treat, it is so not worth getting sick over, so, cake with…water, ick. Or hot tea if I take the initiative

I did have some rice milk tonight with a piece of cake, which leads me to this blog post. Cake good…rice milk good…cake + rice milk not so good. (Just because you can’t have the milk, don’t give up on the cake!)