After several holiday (and post-holiday) indiscretions involving homemade almond bark, chex mix, cashew brittle and various cookies, Mason and I have been trying to get back to eating a healthier diet. We've cut out the white sugar and are trying to lower our heavy agave comsumption somewhat. We've also cut out almost everything processed that we had been depending way too heavily upon and are just trying to eat more fresh fruits and vegetables, nuts, seeds, beans and whole grains. I bought a book for $1 at Half Price called Not Milk...Nut Milks!, which inspired me to get a nut milk bag and start making my own almond milk. Our preferred (and the cheapest) brand of soy milk comes in a big plastic bottle and we go through tons of it. The idea of all of that unnecessarily wasted plastic was really getting to me. Well, now I just feel ridiculous that we've had a Vita-Mix all this time and I've been wasting money AND plastic on soy milk. Almond milk is so easy! I've started adding in pumpkin seeds and brazil nuts for some extra nutrition. The pumpkin seeds also cut the cost quite a bit. Our weeks worth of milk takes me about ten minutes to blend, strain and bottle and costs about $1.50 per half gallon.
This recipe is very "earthy", so you might want to ease yourself into homemade milk by using only almonds and/or adding more sweetener. Some people prefer a stronger milk and use 2 or 3 times the amount of nuts, but we're cheap and this tastes fine to us, so just experiment until you find what you like. Before I ordered the bag, we were using this unstrained. It wasn't a problem for me because I don't drink it straight up, but it was definitely too gritty for Mas. If you're just going to use it in smoothies or with cereal, you may not even need a bag. Try it and see!
Almond-Pumpkin Seed-Brazil Nut Milk
scant 1/4 c. almonds
scant 1/4 c. pumpkin seeds
4 brazil nuts
1/4 c. agave
pinch of salt
vanilla to taste (optional)
Toss everything in the blender. Fill with water to the 8 cup line.
Blend. Strain. Bottle. Refrigerate. Shake (a lot) before using.
3 comments:
Your nut milk mix sounds really interesting! Must try soon.
This sounds really good...I'm dying for a vita-mix. I'm cheap too, so i love this solution!
I made almond milk for Rory one day - I only had a fine sieve to strain it through so it was still a bit gritty, and he didn't really like drinking it, but I did make some wonderful cupcakes out of it!
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