Homemade Almond Milk Recipe

First you squeeze the tiny little almond teets….

Seriously, I have typed this recipe out so many times on facebook, I thought this would be a good first recipe entry. But first…

WHY almond milk?

I’m glad you asked! Dairy. Cow’s milk. Baaaaaaaad. First off, it’s designed, by nature, to turn a cute little calf into a 2,000 pound heifer in about 2 years. Strike one. Second, most of us are lactose intolerant, whether you realize it or not. We don’t have the enzymes to digest milk (especially not another species milk) so it causes inflammation, mucous, and acidic conditions in our body which encourages the growth of bacteria in our intestines. Gross. Strike two. Ok, so let’s say you just can’t believe that milk is bad for you because you drank three glasses a day back in the 50’s when your mother, Mrs. Cleaver served it with every meal. Alright, so let’s talk about the milk of today versus the hand milked sweet little long lashed cow that lived on the neighbor’s farm. Two words. Factory farms. Big, scary, looking for profit companies don’t care about Bessie and her comfort and happiness, so they clamp metal milkers onto her poor little teets to do it automatically. She gets sores from the clamps. The sores produce pus. Which goes into your milk. The factory farmers give her antibiotics to combat the infection. Which goes into your milk. He shoots her with bovine growth hormone to increase her production from ten pounds to a hundred pounds  A DAY! Which goes into your milk. What a charming cocktail!

Now I nursed sweet little patron Saint of Disaster, Genevieve for two years. I made a LOT of milk. I could have fed a third world nation with the amount of juice I made. And if someone gave me a drug to make me produce ten times as much? I would have back kicked him over the milking stool into the next county.

So, back to cow’s milk. I can only speak from my own experiences, but since cutting it out completely a couple years ago, I have dramatically reduced my number of sinus infections, colds and other gross things you don’t want to read about. Later. I want you to like me, now.

You can vary this ad infinitum. It’s so much better than the store bought varieties and it’s EASY and I use it in everything, even if my kids roll their eyes at me when I pour it on their cereal.

Cory’s Almond Milk

1 cup raw almonds

6 cups water

1 1/2 teaspoon vanilla

2 tablespoons coconut oil (unrefined virgin…which is what I used to be)

pinch salt..Pink Himalayan is my fav

1 big squirt of agave syrup (or maple syrup or stevia).

Soak the nuts in filtered water overnight.( I have skipped this step when I was desperate for milk for my coffee, but it’s better to soak them. It breaks the enzyme inhibitors and makes them easier to digest.) Drain and rinse, and place all the ingredients in the blender. Wait til commercial break or pause Phineas and Ferb to avoid disgusted looks and screamings of  “MOM!” Blend for as long as you can stand the sound of the blender and strain through a paint strainer bag from the hardware store. You can buy special milk strainer bags but they are more expensive so go hit up your local Home Depot. In a pinch, I have also used a fine mesh colander but you get a lot more almond pulp.

See how easy? And it makes great hot cocoa late at night!