Buckle your seatbelts, folks. It’s quite a wreck.

This morning I made a lovely veggie scramble with some whole wheat toast for breakfast. Now generally I would toss some feta cheese in with the spinach, tomatoes, and eggs, but alas, I have said my temporary farewell to dairy. So I decided to try the dairy-free daiya “cheddar-style slices” I purchased.

The front of the package boasts that this product “Melts and Stretches!” so I thought I would give it a chance to go ahead and melt into my scramble.

Once I opened it up, I was definitely skeptical – this was an extremely “fake looking” item somewhere in the texture range of plastic to rubber with an orange color similar to that of boxed macaroni and cheese. It had a smell similar to the “cheese product” that comes with breadsticks or crackers in Kraft Handi Snack packs.

I tossed it onto my eggs still hot from the pan and waited. After about a minute it refused
to melt, so I put it in the microwave for about 45 seconds to give it a boost, after which time it did melt onto the scramble.

The melted texture somewhat resembled a thick Velveeta.

The flavor…was…awful.

I am somewhat baffled that anyone in product development at daiya would have approved this as “close enough to regular cheese” to be passable. This product, for me, was a major disappointment. I ended up scraping off all that I could (I gave my dairy-loving husband a tiny taste just for giggles) and topping the whole thing with some Cajun seasoning to cut the taste. Most of the scramble went down the hatch, but I left behind a pile of melted cheese replica that even my cat rejected.

My search for a palatable dairy-free cheese alternative continues…