Hi, my name is Katrin and I love cheese. I love sharp cheddar, I love soft cheese, I like blue cheese. I love milk, nothing is better than pouring myself a glass of freshly opened full-fat milk and just chugging down that bastard. But my stomach is frequently in pain so I wondered if I could stop eating milk products for a week and if it would have any effect on my digestion. I like setting myself challenges and for this week whilst my main challenge was simply not to eat any dairy products I still wanted to figure out several things. Firstly, I wanted to cook/bake something I usually make with milk products dairy free. Secondly, I want to go to a coffee house and order my favourite drink without dairy milk.
Day 1
My favourite bread recipe luckily has no dairy in it so I decided to bake some delicious homemade bread to survive the week. I might be able to survive without cheese but if you take away my carbs I might cut you!
Day 2
I hadn’t planned today well enough. Mondays are quite stressful and I don’t have a lot of time between classes to get some food. Usually, I just run into the R-kioski between my classes and grab a doughnut, or a candy bar.  Today I was just hungry. But it did make me realise how heavily I rely on fast food and sugary snacks to get me through the day.
Day 3
Almost halfway done. I was expecting some amazing energy boost or superhuman strength but alas, nothing magical happened. I did go to the gym and I did feel amazing doing it, but I don’t think I felt more amazing than usually at the gym.
I have noticed that my digestion has calmed down. Which is nice.
Day 4
I decided to go and treat myself to a fancy coffee. I went to Espresso House and asked for a Caramel Latte with oat milk. And I mentioned that there should be NO milk. As I drank the coffee I got the usual uncomfortable feeling in my stomach. I couldn’t believe it. There shouldn’t have been anything in the coffee that would make my stomach hurt. When I got home I looked at the ingredient list and there it was, their caramel is made from condensed milk. Which the barista did not inform me when I specifically mentioned that there should be NO MILK products. I felt quite betrayed. Also, the idea that if I was a vegan this drink would not be vegan. I felt odd that the barista wouldn’t have said something, which makes me think that they probably don’t even know it themselves.
Day 5 – Day 6
I want cheese, I want cheese with chocolate. That is all that I have been able to think about today. My digestion hasn’t been that great and my motivation for being dairy free is even lower.
Day 7
Today I baked glorious vegan cinnamon buns with chocolate frosting. They were amazing. I took them with me to a party and they were a hit! Right after midnight a friend of mine handed me one of those blueberry shots with whipped cream on top and it went straight into my mouth! Delicious.
I have now gone back to dairy, I simply like cheese too much. But I did prove to myself that some things are better without milk products and those vegan cinnamon buns are now on my baking list!  I also realised that if I want to be dairy free I can’t trust anyone when they are preparing my food and that I need to be extremely diligent in looking up what products are without any dairy products.
And I realised there are probably no quick fixes in figuring out why I have a stomach ache all the time. It might be coffee, but I am not ready to go down that path just yet.
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Photos by Ilse Tse