Vegi Sour Cream

Sunshine is always on the look out for healthy eating ideas. And wow! she is a good cook. She recently produced a new recipe that ranked tops with all our family taste testers. (Some of whom have very discriminating tastes.) The creation? Vegetable based Sour Cream. She had in mind some other spread recipes as ideas, and made this recipe on her own. It is a keeper!

Some may wonder, why go to the trouble to make a Sour Cream from vegetable sources? So let's delve into  the topic of health for just a moment.

Animal products, specifically milk as in this post, contain a significant amount of fat. Fat is one of the features of milk making it so versatile. Think about the progression of concentration in this list: whole milk (3%), sour cream (20%), heavy cream (40%), hard cheese (95%), butter (100%). There are variations of fat percentages in various product brands, but the numbers listed are representative.

It takes one gallon of milk to make a gallon of milk. (profound aye? well, follow on.)
It takes 8 gallons of milk to make a gallon of heavy cream.
It takes 21 gallons of milk to make a gallon of butter.

But along with that concentration of fat there is also the potential of concentration of other items which may be of concern. Let's say the cow has natural or artificial hormones excreted in the milk. These would be concentrated by the same percentages in the milk products produced. To purchase these concentrated products from the store opens yourself to all of the unknown dangers of a vast array of vectors. Any time we concentrate food products, we allow the potential for concentrations of poisons as well.

On top of the factors present in milk itself, we also have external contamination dangers from the modern food inc industry, where foods are consolidated and intermingled, and potentially cross contaminated. Buy local means to buy from a farmer or a retailer who has not had a lot of processing steps between you and the source! Better yet, grow your own!

So, gently stepping off my podium, I will proceed to invite you into our kitchen. Sunshine has a treat for you!

The recipe below does have a lot of fat calories via the oil in the recipe, and Sunshine will continue tweaking things to lower the fat content. This recipe provides you a low cost, vegetable source sour cream substitute.

Vegi Sour Cream by Sunshine:

Blend all ingredients together until smooth:

• 2 boxes of MoriNu Tofu, extra firm (12.3 oz boxes)
• 2/3 cup oil
• 1/4 cup lemon juice
• 1 tsp honey
• 1 tsp salt
• 1/4 tsp onion powder
• 1/8 tsp garlic powder
• 1/8 tsp apple cider vinegar

Thin with soymilk if needed.