My Neighbor Totoro Toasted Cheese

Totoro Toasted Cheese

GF toasted goat cheese sandwich, GF "MOMeo" cookie, DF "Ranch;" organic purple cauliflower, romanesco, grapes

Friday, 11/22/13 - I used my awesome Totoro cookie cutter from Warpzone Prints to cut and imprint the bread (and cut the goat cheese,) then used some Earth Balance dairy-free organic buttery spread on the outsides before broiling in the oven for a few minutes on each side. The oil helps bring out the details by toasting the outside and not the imprinted bit. I used goat cheese because I'm lazy - it comes pre-sliced! And both kids like it, unlike the vegan cheeses. And it's still lactose and casein-free, so E and I won't get sick eating it!

I included a little dairy-free Ranch dressing in the mushroom sauce box for Z to dip her cauliflower. It was a long shot, but it paid off! She actually gobbled it all down! Woop! Since Totoro is a nature spirit, I added ladybug and flower picks, a mushroom pick, and a sprout pick in her cauliflower and grapes. I love how it turned out!

I made a soot sprite out of a home-made gluten-dairy-egg-free "Oreo" adapted from a recipe I worked on for the MOMables blog! All I had to do was slice a mini marshmallow (I used a mini Dandies marshmallow from Chicago Vegan Foods - one of the two brands I've ever found without fake Blue dye!) and add a little natural black food dye with a toothpick. Chocolate syrup would have worked just fine too. You can pretend the sticky cut marshmallow sides helped stick them on, but they were kind of stale since I'd left the bag open since Thanksgiving. So they may or may not have been licked to make sticky...

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Toasted E's Sandwich Bites

GF toasted goat cheese sandwich bites; organic purple cauliflower, romanesco, grapes

The Totoro was enough of a pain in the butt (gluten-free bread is crumbly and hard to work with!) so Little E just got a regular grilled goat cheese sandwich (gluten-free) cut into little bites after I toasted it. I included a smiling boy fork for a fun way to eat it, if she wanted.

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