Tuesday

Discovery of the day: Almond milk

Can't remember if I mentioned this before: a co-worked told me how to make almond milk a while back. I gave it a try and it was vile, but I later learned it was because the almonds I used were going rancid. Blech! Ptui! I can still taste it.

Never one to miss the opportunity to beat a dead horse, last week I bought some nice, fresh raw almonds from the bulk foods bin at the fancy-pants grocery store to give it another go.

My co-worked mentioned that she'd heard that it works better if you soak the almonds first, so Sunday morning I put 1 cup of almonds (skins on) in the blender with 4 cups of water and went about my bidness. Well, nothing is easy. My blender is an old second-hand jobbie and apparently the little rubber gasket in the bottom of the container has lost its will to live. Came home Sunday evening to find the almonds sitting high and dry and 4 cups of water all over the counter and dribbling onto the floor so I relocated the almonds to a bowl with more water. Grrr!

When I got home yesterday, I dumped the whole mess back into the blender, added a pinch of salt and a tsp or two of honey and let 'er rip. The capacity of my blender was apparently not quite big enough -- I had to scoop out about a cup of water to keep it from breaching the top.

I pulverized it as best I could, then dumped it into several layers of fine-weave cheesecloth along with the cup of fluid I scooped out. I squeezed the "milk" from the pulp and you know, it's not bad! It's in the fridge hoping I'll use it in the next couple of days before it turns. I wonder if it can be frozen?

Apparently you can use the pulp for baking and the like -- I'm guessing it would be like almond meal or almond flour -- but since I'm not baking now, I threw mine out.

I do wonder whether the fat content will make it too 'pricey' for me, compared to rice milk and soy milk. But it's nice to know I can whip it up in a pinch.