Mac and cheese on a snow day. Grilled cheese and tomato soup when you're home sick. A big plate of nachos or a cheese board when friends visit. Pretty much everyone has a dish that tastes like home, and a whole lot of them involve something melty and cheesy.

So what happens when dairy is off the menu? For plenty of people it isn't a lifestyle choice at all. It's an allergy, an intolerance or a doctor's orders, and it can feel like you’re losing a lot of favorite foods with it. 

We're here to say dairy-free comfort food classics are still very much on the menu.

Dairy-free comfort food when dairy isn't an option

Here's a number that surprised us: According to the National Institute of Health, around 36% of Americans have a lactose intolerance. Add dairy allergies, digestive conditions, other dietary restrictions, and lifestyle preferences, and that's a lot of people at the dinner table quietly working out which dishes are safe to eat.

Going dairy-free for your health doesn't switch off your love for the food you grew up on. You still want the creamy dip at the party, the cheesy casserole at Thanksgiving and the grilled cheese that fixes a bad day.

That feeling is close to home for us. One of the reasons that Gwen started Darë was because of her sister's dietary needs; to make cheese her sister could enjoy without a second thought! Our cheese is made the way cheese has always been made: whole cashews, live cultures, time to ferment, and a team of cheese wizards doing it all by hand in small batches.

The result is dairy-free, probiotic-packed and easy on your belly, with all the tang and creaminess you remember. (We get extra nerdy about it in why vegan cheese doesn't have to be a compromise, if you want the full fermentation story.)

Vegan comfort food the whole table can share

Think about where comfort food actually lives at a party. It’s usually in a bowl in the middle of the table, with everyone hovering around it, chip in hand. Dips are about the most sociable food there is (double-dipping debates aside), which is exactly why we love making them. 

Good vegan comfort food shouldn’t be “special” food set aside for 1 person at the end of the table. It should be the bowl everyone’s fighting over!

That’s why everything we make is built for sharing (if you have the will-power) Our wedges are made to be sliced onto a cheese board, stirred into pasta or crumbled over a cozy fall salad, and our dips and spreads are made for scooping, spreading and warming until they’re melty. Every one starts with whole cashews and live cultures, and gets crafted by hand in small batches in Asheville. Fair warning: they tend to disappear before you’ve had a chance to put out a second dish.

When the dish in the middle of the table works for everyone, nobody has to ask, “Which one can I have?” Your friend with the dairy allergy, your vegan cousin and the uncle who swears he’d never touch vegan cheese all reach for the same bowl. Holy smokes, that’s a good feeling.

Why comfort food matters: the psychology of sharing food

Food is emotional, nostalgic and a huge part of being human. In 2011, psychologists at the University at Buffalo found that comfort food can actually ease feelings of loneliness. Their theory? We link these foods to the people who made them for us, so eating them (or even just writing about them!) reminds us of those relationships.

So your grandma's mac and cheese is never just mac and cheese. It's a memory you can eat.

And we've been at this for a long time. The Forme of Cury, a cookbook put together by English King Richard II's master cooks around 1390, includes a dish called "makerouns": thin sheets of pasta layered with grated cheese and butter. That's one of the earliest written mac and cheese recipes, which makes it royally cheesy. (A dairy-free version from the Darë kitchen? Don't tempt us...)

Even the word "companion" comes from the Latin for "with bread," as in someone you share your bread with.

People have been bonding over food for about as long as there have been people and food. That's exactly why being left out of the shared dish stings, and why making sure everyone can dig in matters so much. Nobody should have to sit out the good stuff!

Dairy-free fall comfort food (dessert included)

Fall might just be peak comfort food season and the lead up to Thanksgiving means more people round the table. So to simplify things, how about feeding everyone the same dish? 

Here are a few of our favorite dairy-free comfort food recipes to start with:

• Vegan fall flatbread: our Smoked Pimento Dip on a warm chickpea flour crust with roasted butternut squash and shallots. Gluten-free, and perfect cut into squares for sharing.

• Easy cheesy party platter: warm, scoopable Queso Blanco with refried beans, salsa, guacamole and crunchy pepitas. 

Hosting a mixed crowd? Our guide to crowd-pleasers that happen to be dairy-free has even more ideas.

Then there's dessert, which is often the hardest course to find a dairy-free version of. Holiday tables are full of pies and cheesecakes that someone in the room can't eat. So this year we teamed up with our Asheville friends at Spicewalla to create the best vegan Pumpkin Spice Cheesecake. It has a creamy cashew filling with real pumpkin and their pumpkin spice blend, on a crust made with gluten-free oats. It's a 10-inch cake that cuts into 10 to 12 slices, so it was made with sharing in mind.

The cheesecake itself isn't really the point (though it's very, very good). The point is the moment your guest with dietary restrictions gets a slice of the same dessert as everyone else, instead of a bowl of fruit and a polite smile. Everyone gets a slice of the action. That's what comfort food is meant to feel like.

At the end of the day, comfort food comes down to the people around the table, so make sure there's something on it for all of them. Pull up a chair, pass the chips and take it cheesy!