{Dairy Free} Zuppa Toscana

A dairy intolerant woman went into a local restaurant for a meal and asked the waiter, “I can't eat anything with dairy in it. Can you tell me how this meal is prepared?”

“Oh yes,” said the waiter, smiling helpfully, “It’s cooked in a Wok!” –adaped from WhatAllergy.com

Dairy has bothered me with varying degrees of severity/ annoyance for about as long as I remember. But over the last couple of years it has gotten worse. About seven months ago, I went dairy-free. I immediately felt better, but soon realized that I should probably be a whole-lot-of-other-things-free too. Giving up dairy was hard and I'm stubbornly avoiding trying to weed out any other intolerances, especially when the official test said I don't have Celiac Disease {gluten allergy}, which is pretty serious if left unaddressed. But that's an adventure for another day.

When giving up dairy, I looked for ways to find substitutes at first, but there are just some things that can't be recreated without dairy, so I only substitute when it doesn't alter the food too much. Mostly, I look for recipes that don't have dairy in them in the first place so they don't feel incomplete without it. It's always fun, though, to find a good dairy-free recreation of a dish that usually has dairy in it. Today, I want to share a really yummy dairy-free {and gluten-free if you use the right mayonnaise and sausage} Zuppa Toscana.

Zuppa Toscana

1 lb. mildly spicy sausage
½ cup finely diced onions
1 tablespoon finely chopped chives
1½ tablespoons finely diced fresh parsley or 1½ teaspoons dried parsley
⅛ teaspoon red pepper flakes
2 teaspoons salt
½ teaspoon pepper
2½ lbs. red potatoes, diced
¼ cup mayonnaise
4 cups rice milk

• In a large saucepan, brown sausage; drain off excess grease. Add onions to sausage and cook until onions turn clear. Stir in chives, parsley, red pepper flakes, salt and pepper. Add potatoes. Whisk together mayonnaise and about ¾ cup rice milk. Add remaining rice milk to ingredients in the pan and then stir in mayonnaise and milk mixture.
• Bring to a boil; reduce heat and simmer together until potatoes are tender.

Serves 5-6

Notes:
• I used sausage labeled as "mild spice," and with the red pepper flakes it wasn't too spicy. I like things mild so you can increase the spiciness of the dish by getting a medium or hot sausage.