Homemade Almond Milk

Homemade Almond Milk

One cup raw whole almonds, soaked overnight, drained and rinsed.  One cup of  the best-tasting water you have available, I use bottled.  Sweeten and salt to taste.  I use two Medjool dates (pitted) and a few grinds of Costco's pink salt.  I used to use about a tablespoon of raw agave instead of the dates but found the dates give it a mellower depth of sweetness, and help cut the "wet cardboard" flavor.

I run the Vitamix for one and half minutes.  A regular blender would be even longer.  This really pulls the fats and flavors out of the nuts.

Pour through a fine sieve, milk bag, or I use a paint strainer from the hardware store. Squeeze out as
much moisture as you can.  Decant into a cool-looking old milk bottle.

Save the pulp for another purpose--crackers are what I usually make. Or granola bars.  I'm working on biscotti but have been unsuccessful so far. If you dehydrate the pulp, it's supposed to make the best almond flour.  The grossest-sounding use I read was a vegan cheesecake.  The raw vegan hummus might be okay.

Grain-free Mock Rye Crackers and Tuna Salad

The tuna salad is just a basic mercury-free canned tuna with some minced carrot, celery, pickle, chive, and mayonnaise, served on a bed of heirloom mini lettuce.

The mock rye crackers are the interesting part of this lunch.  I make almond milk two or three times a week and am always looking for something tasty to do with the resulting pulp.  I've been working on recipes riffing off this post from Elana's Pantry.  I highly recommend Elana's recipes--they almost always work well the first time and, even more importantly, taste great.

I've made several variations on Elana's crackers because I get tired of the same old thing all the time.  I still have trouble with the crackers having a kinda cardboard-y "health-food" texture but that is not too noticeable unless the crackers are eaten on their own.  And, sadly, my crackers always curl a bit, unlike Elana's lovely flat and perfectly edged crackers, because I can't get my oven as low-temp as her recipe calls for and my pizza cutter makes is wobbly and creates rather whimsical score lines.

Nonetheless, these added a nice crunch and rye-bread flavor while conveying the tuna salad into my mouth.

Grain-free Mock-Rye Crackers

 1 cup firmly packed almond pulp (I get this from one or two batches of almond milk)

2 tablespoons dark flax seed, ground, 

1 tablespoon grapeseed oil

1 teaspoon lightly crushed caraway seeds 

1/2 teaspoon finely ground coffee beans

1/2 teaspoon kosher or sea salt

additional salt and caraway seed for topping (I ran out and didn't finish the pictured crackers)

Combine all ingredients in a mixing bowl.  Roll dough into a tight ball and press between two layers of parchment paper.  Roll out between the paper to no more than 1/8 inch thick (Elana says up to 1/4 inch but that doesn't work in my higher heat oven).  Remove the top paper and transfer the bottom paper with the rolled dough onto a flat baking sheet.  Score the dough into 2 inch squares with a knife or pizza cutter.  (I find that the pizza cutter is much easier to work with but mine is so wobbly that I end up with crackers anything from 1 inch to 3 inch crackers.  Obviously, I need to work on my fine motor skills.  Or buy a better pizza cutter.)

Bake at 350F for 10 minutes.  Without opening the oven, turn the heat down as low as it will go--my oven's bottom temperature is 170F--and continue baking until crackers are thoroughly dried and crispy. This batch took a surprisingly quick 45 minutes at the lower temp.