waste not

So as promised, here is a recipe for almond milk.  It's so ridiculously easy that I'm looking forward to making lots of other nut milks.

My first advice is to buy a nut milk bag, they are not very expensive and you should get a lot of use out of it.  I have tried using a clean dish towel before but it does let a lot of the pulp in, making your nut milk thicker, and that's ok if that's what you like.

The following recipe is for basic unsweetened almond milk.

Almond milk
makes 2 cups

Ingredients
1 cup raw almonds
2 cups of water

Method 
Soak the raw almonds in lots of water for 48 hours.
Once soaked, rinse well and drain.
Place almonds in a powerful blender with 2 cups of clean water (use filtered if possible).
Blend until mixture is super smooth.
Pour mixture into nut milk bag, making sure you have a bowl to catch the nut milk!
Squeeze as much of the liquid out as you can.
Pour prepared milk into a glass bottle with tight fitting lid, it should keep in the fridge for 2 days.

Now at this point, prior to bottling, you can add your flavours.

So normally I would add some organic vanilla extract and a couple of drops of stevia or a date to give it a tiny bit of sweetness.

Was that the easiest thing ever or what?
You can do that to every nut you desire.

So, with delicious fresh almond milk in tow, I decided to make a yummy turmeric almond milk.

Why do I love turmeric so much?
Simple really, turmeric is an overall healing spice.  Apart from being a powerful anti-inflammatory, it also has anti-tumour and anti-microbial properties.  
It's the bright yellow pigment, curcumin, that makes turmeric the pharmacological powerhouse that it is.

Here's what you need:

Tumeric Almond Milk
Makes 2 cups

Ingredients
Prepared almond milk (as above)
2 pitted medjool dates
1 TBS raw coconut nectar
1 1/2 tsp of ground turmeric
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1/4 tsp ground ginger
1/8 tsp of cardamon
freshly cracked pepper*

Method
Blend all ingredients together until smooth.
*adding the black pepper means that piperin, the active ingredient in black pepper, increases turmeric absorption, making it up to 2000x more powerful.  Hand me the grinder!!

Whilst you can have the turmeric almond milk cold, it also makes a delicious and nourishing drink when warm.  
To keep it raw, I just blended mine again in the vitamix until it warmed up a bit.  

So I bet you're wondering about the almond pulp right?  No, don't throw it in the bin!  There's many things that you can do with almond pulp, here's one of my favourite ways with almond pulp.

Almond Hummus
Makes about 500 mls

Ingredients
Left over almond pulp
1 large zucchini
small handful of baby spinach
1 garlic clove
1 tsp of ground cumin
juice of half a lemon
1/4 cup of water
Himalayan pink salt and freshly ground pepper to taste

Method
Blend all ingredients together in a powerful blender, you will need to scrape the sides down to make sure you get a smooth consistency as it's quite thick.  Don't be tempted to add more water, you just need to push the ingredients down with the blender tool to get all the ingredients blended up.
Store in a glass container with a tight fitting lid.  Should keep for about 3 days.

The reason I love this hummus so much is because it still has that delicious smooth consistency and taste but is completely raw.  I've tried making raw hummus before using sprouted chickpeas, but it didn't taste as good as this!

I also use the hummus as a salad dressing, it's the bomb!

Peas, love and mungbeans,

xxb