With so much content here on Go Dairy Free (over 5000 pages and growing daily!) we thought it was time to corral some of this information into user-friendly index pages. Thus, our “Parties, Holidays, Entertaining, and Travel” category has been undergoing some much needed metamorphosis to fix broken links, add new links, and incorporate an easy-to-update format. The page is intended to bring together relevant articles for social dairy-free dining, whether at a party in your own home, or while traveling on the road.

The new category page offers article links under the subject headers Holidays (with categories for Valentine’s Day / Mother’s Day, Easter / Passover, Halloween, Thanksgiving and Christmas / Hanukkah), Celebrations & Birthdays, General Entertaining & How To's, and Travel. We will continue to update with links as new stories fit into these subjects. The new "Parties, Holidays, Entertaining, and Travel" category page can be found in our recently renovated “Food & Grocery” section.

So please, continue perusing Go Dairy Free – there is a great deal to discover, and enjoy our new user-friendly categories as we create them!

St. Patrick's Day often slides under the radar for many non-Irish, non-drinking, green-averse people. But for us, every holiday (well, I think we still need to work on some ideas for Groundhog's Day) is a great excuse for some new recipes.

In prior years we have featured a couple of gems, like this recipe for Grass Hopper Mint Chocolate Pie and one for Four Leaf Clover Rolls (a baker's delight!). This year we have two new allergy-friendly recipes to add to the festivities, both of which are from Enjoy Life Foods. This makes them automatically free from the top eight allergens (dairy, eggs, soy, tree nuts, peanuts, wheat, fish, and shellfish) and gluten-free if prepared with the recommended ingredients. Though the Beef, Cabbage and Potato Bake is obviously non-vegan, feel free to substitute your favorite veg-ground to make it a strictly vegetarian meal ...

Our review group has quite literally tested hundreds of books and cookbooks in the name of dairy-free living. We do our best to give you very unbiased reviews, offering up the pros and cons of each. We read every book thoroughly; yes, even the cookbooks - from forewards to recipe notes. But for cookbooks, we also test out at least a handful of recipes to give you our verdict on if the recipe works as written and if the outcome is delicious. And while there truly are merits to most books, there are some that we end up reaching for again and again, even after the review is complete. Our favorites range from strictly dairy-free, vegan, or food allergy-friendly cookbooks to "old-time" recipe troves that are simply easy to convert and foolproof.

We have compiled our true favorites along with a list of those we look to for back-up, in one handy Top Recommended Books for Dairy-Free Living page. This page will be updated as new favorites emerge and perhaps as once loved books are bumped from the listing, so bookmark it and enjoy perusing our top selections ...

Q: Wendy – After reading your post on chocolate, I purchased the No Dairy Product List (the one for dairy substitutes), which is very helpful, but I was actually overwhelmed by the number of chocolate options! Are there any brands in particular that you recommend?

A: Alisa – There are so many wonderful brands of chocolate out there that it can be difficult to narrow the field down. For starters, I suggest you take a look at the chocolate section in our product reviews. The reviews include chocolates sampled by myself and by the various members of the Go Dairy Free review team. 

But, on a more personal note, there are a few brands of chocolate that make frequent appearances in my household: