So last night I began making homemade almond milk.  Why homemade you ask? Well, I know there is a very delicious alternative with Diamond Almond Breeze, but there are added ingredients like Xantham Gum, Carageenan, and other emulsifiers that I don’t know if our son would react to.  Plus, I don’t know how the milk is made and whether they soak the almonds before hand.  I’d rather take the time to make my own and know I did everything to make it digestible and nutrient dense for our little guy.

So the night before I was to make the milk, I took a bag of almonds, put them in a stainless steel bowl with 2 tbsp of Bragg raw apple cider vinegar, 1 tsp of celtic sea salt, and enough hot water to fill the bowl. The reason for soaking the almonds is twofold: first to soften the meat of the nut, and secondly to help remove the phytic acid in the skins that blocks nutrient absorption.  The practice of soaking nuts, seeds and legumes to remove the acid is part of the Traditional Foods movement Nourishing Traditions, or NT for short.

In the morning, I rinsed the nuts with cold water and put them in my Cusinart food processor, adding filtered water as it pureed the nuts into a souplike paste.  I probably added 4 cups of water or thereabouts, but I really just eyeballed it until all the contents in the food processor were moving.  When I felt it was mixed enough, I tried to filter the paste through my strainer but this only yielded a cup or so of milk.  So I really dug my hands in and literally starting milking the paste, squeezing fistfuls of almond good to get the milk out.  This worked and I ended up with about 2 cups of almond milk, and a TON of wet almond meal I hadn’t a clue what to do with.  Next time, I think a cheesecloth will work better.

The almond milk came out great, sweet and nutty and creamy, even better than the Almond Breeze.  I admit that it is an expensive venture, $5 for 2 cups of milk, but worth it in the short term until we see if our son can eat it.  But I still had this pile of ground almond meat that the green girl in me didn’t want to waste.  I decided to dry it in the oven, so for 8 hours it sat on a wax papered cookie sheet at 170*.  It dried perfectly, and if I had a coffee grinder, I could grind it up further and make almond flour, but for now I am storing it, saving it to sprinkle on salads and yogurt.  I did use it last night for my Thai Noodles & Chicken recipe and it worked beautifully!

Follow the food trial with the Almond Milk here…