Lactose-Free Living

Having lived a long time being unable to digest dairy products, I’ve discovered a lot of work-arounds and ways to enjoy the taste of my favorite foods again, without the pain and problems.  I’ve also learned the hard way about some foods I hadn’t ever suspected that I’d end up having to avoid.

    

First, we’ll start with some basics and some helpful facts.

• Lactose-intolerant people CAN have yogurt, as long as it doesn’t have any milk added (such as in a yogurt beverage).  Yes, it goes against all logic, but it’s true.
• We can also have ALL varieties of cheeses and other products that are made from GOAT’S milk.
• From my and other people’s experiences, brand name Kellogg’s Pop Tarts ARE lactose-free, but the generic ones are not.  Go figure.
• Most hot cocoa mixes are NOT lactose free, even when mixed with water only.  Some time ago, Hershey made one that was lactose-free, but they took it off the market.  I have a stockpile of it, but haven’t seen it for sale again since I bought my supply, a long time ago.
• In the frozen pot pie section, Marie Callender's HONEY Chicken Pot Pie is definitely lactose-free, even though they don’t say it on the package.  (NOTE that it’s the HONEY variety, NOT the regular chicken pot pie!)  My daughter and I have enjoyed it before, with no negative repercussions.  This is also not always available and not at all stores, and not all the time, so check around.  If you find it and then can’t find it again, ask your store to make sure they keep carrying it, then keep checking back.  I haven't seen it on the shelves in awhile, but you might still find it out there somewhere.

Here are some lactose-free products, and where to find them in the Chicago suburbs.  Check with online sites for other stores, or with the manufacturers’ websites, if you still can’t find them.

  

Lactaid Milk – Available almost everywhere.

  

Lactaid Brand Ice Cream – Sold at most Meijer stores, but NOT at Jewel or Dominicks (also called "Safeway" in other parts of the USA). The chocolate ice cream is actually rather delicious, but isn’t always in stock.  The other flavors are Vanilla (good, not great) and Butter Brickle (who’d have guessed… it’s supposedly the 3^rd most popular ice cream flavor in the USA!).

  

Beemster Vlaskaas Cheese – Usually in stock at a few Jewel stores, but always in the gourmet cheese area.  Also available online at iGourmet.com and other online vendors, and arrives in perfectly fresh condition.  Not cheap, at about $7-$8 per 8oz piece.  All of the Beemster brand cheeses are lactose-free, but the Vlaskaas tastes most like the yellow cheese we grew up with, except that it’s just a bit drier in texture than Velveeta.  Eat it within the first week, or it tends to get too dry.  It tastes great by itself or sliced thin on sandwiches.  It does melt in a grilled cheese, but just doesn’t taste the same as a Velveeta grilled cheese.   It IS made from actual cow’s milk, but has never even irritated my stomach once in all the many times I’ve enjoyed lots of it. 

NOTE:  On rare occasion it is not in season, and you just can’t get any anywhere.  It does come back around eventually.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B007599SCK/ref=ox_sc_sfl_title_3?ie=UTF8&psc=1&smid=A3HM4Y4MZQ8804

  

Cablanca – (Everybody say “PIZZA!”)  Also usually in stock a few Jewel stores, but always in the gourmet cheese area.  Also available online at iGourmet.com and other online vendors, from which it arrives in perfectly fresh condition.  And... also not cheap, at about $8 per 7oz piece.  This is a goat’s milk cheese, but unlike so many other goat cheeses, this one has the perfect texture and an excellent taste for homemade pizza (yay!).  Shred it directly onto the pizza, as it makes for the best consistency that way.  The flavor is just a bit different than mozzarella, but a very little bit of shredded Beemster cheese on top makes for a great pizza flavor.  You might want to cut off a small bit of the wedge's sideedge (under the wrapper piece) before eating it, since that edge is a bit harder and more dry.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0026S9O60/ref=ox_sc_sfl_title_1?ie=UTF8&psc=1&smid=A1Y9GGZH273SRT

  

Cabot Vermont Cheeses – Only sometimes available at Jewel, BUT do NOT look for it in the gourmet cheese section, instead it’s in the dairy section with the normal cheeses.  You can also order some of these online at iGourmet.com and other online retailers.  Many of Cabot’s cheese products are lactose-free, even though they’re made with real cow’s milk.  So far, I haven’t had any problems with the sharp cheddar, but then I’ve been eating it in only small amounts. A lactose-intolerant gentleman I met at the Jewel near me recommended this brand.  Here’s the company’s website, so you can look over their products.  They also have some lactose-free recipes posted, if you “Select by category” on the left side of the page.http://www.cabotcheese.coop/pages/our_products/product.php?catID=37&id=6

    And in case you want to find it on Amazon or iGourmet…
http://www.amazon.com/Cabot-Extra-Sharp-Cheddar-ounce/dp/B00A4F5ZLK/ref=sr_1_4?s=grocery&ie=UTF8&qid=1359687657&sr=1-4&keywords=cabot+cheese

  

I hope to post a blog in the future which will include a few recipes for the more common foods that we lactose-intolerant people miss, as well as some other advice.

To EVERY Would-Be Author Out There...

I recently met up online with a man who wanted desperately to be an author and not just a writer, and was disappointed after just his first few rejections from major publishing companies (he really hadn't had that many rejections, just unrealistic expectations of how many rejections he should expect).  This had him considering self-publishing.  Then, after looking into self-publishing, he was further disappointed at how much time and money the self-publishing process would cost him, and at the large number of publishing scammers out there.

Sadly, the story he told of getting ripped off is a common one.  Too many authors are drawn in by the promise of a quick publish, or a cheap edit, or similar schemes, and they end up handing over lots of money to people who do them little or no good, or throwing away lots of their own money and time getting their book e-published with no profit, when the only money they should have to spend is on postage.

Remember, there are VERY few writers who have both great ideas and great style, and this great style is usually developed after a LOT of practice, rejection letters, and/or simply many years of living. I've seen some really great ideas, very badly written, get re-worked and published.  I've also seen some really well-written very unimaginative published work more times than I can count, so don't give up, no matter what ANYone might say what to you! 

KEEP SUBMITTING!

 You CAN do it!

 ("Gone With The Wind" was rejected countless times, and ended up becoming a classic.)

Now, as for the edit... 

A really thorough edit, a really GOOD edit, will never cost you less than $3,000.  Anyone offering a "budget deal", as I’ve seen some freelance editors propose, are either just giving it a quick once-over— merely proofreading for spelling & grammar errors— or they're ("oops") suddenly going to find that "it needs a lot more work than the original bid" (gosh! imagine that!).  The most recent book I contract-edited took me about two weeks for just the first few chapters, but it WAS rather poorly written, so it took me much longer than usual. And THAT was only for the first time through, since I had yet to edit the changed version (properly done, there's ALWAYS a second edit for errors that came into the process during changes as well as problems that were missed the first time around, etc., then edits again after typesetting/prepping it for publication). 

If you decide to self-publish, you should expect four rounds of edits or more (two pre-typesetting or pre-final format, two or more post-formatting).  One extra round should be dedicated to graphics, images, page references (if you have an index/contents page/etc), and other extraneous items, since they need special attention.  Also, you must be VERY careful about copyrights and ownership of any images or quotes you use if you self-publish.  You need to be sure that your characters and events do not too closely resemble any real people or events, or other author’s characters and events, to avoid lawsuits down the road.  Non-fiction also requires good fact-checking and source-verification, as well as any possible permissions for quotes, trademarks, etc.  Even the copyright page has to be double-checked, and the legal language of the copyright itself must be correct (you will want to pay a copyright lawyer for that one)! 

Somewhere along the way, you’ll have to do lots of online searching (beyond just Amazon.com) to see if anyone has a title, cover art, or author name too similar to yours (and you should re-check that just before sending it to press).  Then you need an ISDN number assigned to your work.


Eventually, you're ready to go on the market.


If you're self-publishing the RIGHT way, you'll need to create your own imprint and corporate identity. If you’re generating printed material instead of just e-publishing, you should use a printer that is not affiliated with any vanity press. (Trade publishers know ALL the vanity press imprints, so once a book is self-published through any vanity press, the author's online profile will always have that for the trade publisher to find when they consider you for future publication— it's not something the industry should be proud of, but there IS an industry stigma against authors who've self-published, and you will NEVER re-publish through the trades any work that was once self-published.)  E-publishers should also do their best to look like another company approved the work, and not just that the author was able to download it to the internet cheaply.

So that will get you started, but the toughest part of publishing is SALES.

On top of all this work, you'll also need to know about marketing your book (which actually, by the way, starts LONG before it's ready for press/market).  The timing of a book's release-- depending on the book's subject, material, etc.— can be vital, so sometimes— very rarely— a work is held back from market intentionally.
 

(Whew!  Wow!  Let's take a breath... )

Well, that might give you an idea of why it costs so much, and takes so much time.  Too many authors wonder why it takes their book so long to get on the market through the trade publishers, because they don't realize what all is actually involved.  They think that the paper press portion is the major chunk of time, and/or that the editor is just letting it sit on their desk untouched for months on end, but that's a big mistake.  Self-publishing might seem faster, and it sometimes is, but it can also create poor end product, or slip in and out of the market unnoticed.  (Just a "heads-up", here.)  Yes, it CAN sometimes create great product that sells well, but this is rare and difficult.  And, as you've sadly already the hard way, it can lure a lot of scammers to your door.

So you NEED to have some VERY realistic expectations for your work. 

If you trade publish, and if you're lucky, you’ll get a good publisher who really wants to promote your work, and you might be asked to get yourself out there and do events/gigs/etc for publicity.  I have seen at least one great work fail when one author thought his job ended when the book made it to press, and the editor never want to go near that author again.  Also, I've seen an author's willingness to help out and cooperate with the editor as much as possible help sales immensely, as well as make for the editor's future willingness to work with the author again.  (We LOVE writers who take criticism well and want to promote with us.  That does NOT mean you have to accept every change that's asked of you, but it is nice for us not to have to spend hours on the phone trying to talk you into every little thing.)

The one thing to try to remember, the one thing it's hard for EVERY author to remember, is that your writing is not really YOU.  It feels personal when you get rejections, criticism, etc, but it's just some words that you wrote down.  But your work is not YOU.  So any rejection or criticism is NOT a rejection or criticism of you personally, just the words on the page.  Besides, even the great authors have had to do re-writes, changes, and/or abandon work completely.  If anything like that were to happen to you, it would only put you in some pretty impressive company!

BEFORE you e-publish, and end up spending MORE money and time that you'll regret wasting...

Have at least three other professionals read the entire manuscript. These need to be people who will give you brutal, honest, unbiased opinion (Mom and Uncle Fred don’t count). Some writer's groups MIGHT help, but there should be at least a few published authors in the group, to get decent feedback.

If you have submitted your manuscript several publishers and/or agents, submit many more times before you give up. This will give you the better—read “potentially actually profitable”—deal with the least amount of investment and the best return for you.

If you've submitted and been rejected without comment too many times to count, you need to find out WHY it was rejected before you put more money and time into self-publishing. If there's a problem with your manuscript, putting it out there for no one to read and no one to pay for will do nothing for your reputation or your life savings. Perhaps you've just been doing something wrong on the query or the submission process (for example, submitting a cozy tea mystery to a publisher that only publishes tough-guy-dick mysteries), but the manuscript rocks.  OR, perhaps there's a major issue with the plot, characters, or something else that will make it a flop no matter what you do or who reads it.

It is vitally important to know what issues you're dealing with BEFORE you try self-publishing.

I always warn writers—especially new or previously unpublished writers—away from self-publishing, because there are so many issues and problems an inexperienced writer will never anticipate, and because so often unpolished writing gets tons of money wasted on it. If you really want to take the self-publish route, be prepared to invest MORE and to wait even longer.  AND, once it's self-published, it has NO chance of getting picked up by a major publisher (speaking from experience here—there are too many legal and marketing issues to the trade publishing companies if they take on a previously self-published book).

You will NEED a pro editor to go over the manuscript (you might want to do this anyway, even if you end up only submitting to the trades). This is usually fairly expensive, depending upon who you get to do the work, for the edit portion alone (that’s a THOROUGH edit involving lots of contextual comments and the like, not just a spell-check).  Then, after the first round of changes, you will need another round of edits and changes (inevitably, whenever you make changes, things can get more messed up, or there might be other problems that were missed the first time around). 

Then, on top of THAT big cost for the edits, you’ll have MORE expenses— the typesetting, artwork, marketing (HUGE bucks for successful campaigns), etc.

Remember, if you, your Mom, and your best friend are the only ones who think it’s ready for public consumption, then it certainly is NOT.

Yes, it's your precious baby that you've slaved over for countless hours, and yes YOU think it's just perfect, but I promise that you've stared at it so long that you can no longer see some of the problems with it.  NO writer can best edit his or her own work. 

If you want to be able to call yourself a professional, you need to ACT like a professional—make sure your writing is polished, BEFORE you expect to get it published, whether that be by a trade publisher or e-published on Amazon.