Blending

Earlier this summer Phil bought me a blender.  Not just your $30 run of the mill blender.  We're talking some serious action here.  My man bought me the best--a vitamix.  For those of you who are unfamiliar with a vitamix blender, they have the same horsepower as a small lawn mower.  So yeah, we're talking some heavy duty blending.

The original reason I needed a blender was to make my own milk at home.  Trying to be a good steward of our grocery money, I realized that spending $7-$10 a month on store bought milk was an easy thing to shave off.  I also thought that if I baked all of our bread we would save around $20 a month.  And I tried, how I tried!  And it wasn't that it turned out bad or anything, it just wasn't soft enough, and the servings were too large.  We were eating more grains than we needed.  And living in a split level home with an upstairs kitchen, it was heating up the house too much.  So, we compromised and said, let's just keep the home made bread for special meals.  But I digress...

I read lots of recipes on how to make your own milk at home, and the first few were a flop.  One had me peeling soaked almonds.  It took our whole family an hour to peel a cup and a half of soaked almonds!  And then sadly, the kids spat out the results.

I'll let you in on a little secret: I'm a recovering perfectionist who tends to quit if things don't work out the first time or two.

But I've persevered, I had to make good use of this great blender!  Then I ran out of cheesecloth, and I discovered, you cannot put cheesecloth through the washer and dryer.  So I read.  I read and I read and I read.  I didn't want to keep buying cheesecloth, that didn't seem like a great way to save us money.  Also, I had guilt when I'd toss it in the trash.  And no, I didn't want to rinse out in the sink and reuse, that just didn't seem very sanitary to me.  When finally in the comment section of some random blog, I found my solution--flour sack towels.

I was thrilled to find that Sams Club carried them, and at a dollar a towel, I felt it was a great purchase.  Today was the first day that I used the towels.  I would have to say it was a raging success, there was more almond 'fluff' left behind than the cheesecloth ever did.  And the milk is wonderful looking, and tasting!  I told the girls that tomorrow is cereal day (a rare treat) and that they will have the equivalent of store milk to put on.

Just in case you were wondering the methods to my milky madness, here's my recipe.

Almond Milk

1 cup of preblanched almonds
4 cups water
1/2 tsp vanilla
1 dropper of liquid stevia (probably about 10-12 drops)

put almonds and 1c of water into blender.  Blend on high until a loose paste has formed.  Add remaining 3 cups of water and blend on high  until well incorporated.  Strain through flour sack towel and add vanilla and stevia.  Shake and enjoy!