Tuesday, July 12, 2011

Making Almond Milk

This morning I still felt like grapefruit and bee pollen and nuts yet wanted a change as well so I made a litre of almond milk. Repeatedly I have noticed people promoting the making of almond milk by leaving the skins on to be filtered out in the straining procedure. What I do is in room temperature water soak almonds over night and take the time to hand strip off the skins before blending the almonds with fresh water. I generally find at least 2 really horrible looking almonds, moldy rotten looking things, which I do not want to be drinking. That kind of almond doesn't show any sign of rot with the skin on. Maybe it isn't rot, but I doubt anyone would actually eat the almond if they saw it. For this reason I don't like to drink almond milk anyplace that leaves the almond skins on during the blending portion of making the milk. Sure it takes the extra time to hand skin. I also scrape off any areas on the almonds that look iffy.

To me it is worth the work. Consider it almond milk made with extra love.

Usually I add nothing to my milk. The odd time I will add vanilla for a different flavour. The natural almond flavour is a best for my taste pleasure; no flavourings or sweeteners need be added.




My kitchen is outfitted with two blenders, a vita mix and also a bendtec. I use the blentec for almond milk, most of the time, on the whole juice setting. The blendtec is automatic, the vita mix is not. The ratio is 1 cup dry almonds soaked then peeled and added to 4 cups of water in the blendtec. Strain and voila(!) delicious almond milk!
I will do 3 separate cups up at a time and stored as separate batches in the freezer, ready to blend. That way I peel 3 batches at one time and don't have to peel for a few weeks.




The picture shows the straining method, in mesh bags used for nut and seed milks which also can be used for making sprouts. With one hand on the camera and the other hand holding up the bag, I was unable to show squeezing the milk out of the bag. Do that carefully to avoid milk squirting through the mesh. Actually if you have a place to hang the bag you can let most of the milk drip out by itself or set the bag full into a strainer that sits over a large bowl or pitcher.

The almond left after squeezing out the milk can be dehydrated to be used to prepare other interesting raw dishes such as crackers, cookies, cakes, sauces, ice cream, etc.




Finished and ready to store, in milk bottles, of course. :) I have bought cow milk in bottles and given the milk away so I could keep the bottles.




After cutting up the grapefruit, adding a heaping tablespoon of bee pollen, a sprinking of pecans, and the fresh made almond milk, breakfast was ready. I ate it at 12:20 PM.
I puckered on this one… the mixture of sweet and sour together wasn't an expected experience!

At 1:55 PM I felt like a pear with walnuts.

6:00 PM I felt hungry on the way home from picking up a few supplies and ate some cherries. Wow were they good! There was a special on strawberries so I bought 4 tubs full which will be frozen to be used as sorbet. No doubt I will eat some fresh before they go to the freezer.




7:04 PM The oat groats that are on the last 24 hours of sprouting smelled so good I had 1-1/2 tablespoons in a bit of almond milk with a few coconut crystals. Now that was good. It would make a wonderful cereal anytime. It isn't so easy to find good quality raw oat groats, and oat groats that are actually raw! I order mine in from Toronto.






Seaweed noodles kept coming to mind today so I made some for dinner. They come dried and soften up really quickly when covered with warm water.






Added to yam angel hair noodes and zucchini angel hair and curly noodles made a nice looking noodle dish. It was another experienmental dish, just another idea.




7:21 PM The noodles were mixed with sundried tomato sunflower pesto, topped with chopped red onion with avodado and it was called dinner. Wow, did it taste amazing!!

The noodles are made with one of two different noodle makers I have on hand. I will take photos of both in another posting. See you tomorrow!