almond milk

The first time I had ever heard of almond milk was last year during the 30 day vegan workshop.  Not being a milk drinker, it wasn’t that big of a deal to me to find a milk alternative.  I did, however, want to at least offer something to Emma.  She doesn’t drink milk, or do much dairy at all actually.  But, I figured a little more protein would be helpful to my littles.

I decided to try making almond milk after seeing that it is really just a few ingredients…most of which I had on hand already.  I wasn’t sure that my blender would be up to the task, but it was.

And how was I to know that everyone in my family would love this new homemade almond milk?  Matt deemed it vanilla ice cream.  And Emma has asked for it just about every hour since I made the first batch.

Almond Milk

2 cup soaked raw almonds
4 cups water
4-5 pitted dates*
1 tsp vanilla*

Soak almonds overnight in cold water with a tablespoon of raw apple cider vinegar – I use Bragg.  Drain and rinse almonds.  Put almonds, 4 cups water, dates, and vanilla in a blender and blend away until the almonds and dates are all ground up.  Put through cheese cloth/muslin/nut bag and squeeze out almond milk.  Discard the leftover almond pulp.  Drink away…seriously delicious.

*For unsweetened almond milk just use almonds and water and don’t put dates and vanilla in.