Homemade Non-Dairy Milk- Almond and Rice and a Smoothie Recipe

Almond Milk

As I was cruising my personal Facebook page I noticed one of my uber-healthy friends mentioned that she makes her own almond milk. For all of the things I have considered making at home I never thought of making my own milk. For some reason I imagined a difficult process with lots of steps/ingredients/special equipment- boy was I wrong! Homemade almond milk is a money saver from store bought almond milk and costs about the same as organic dairy milk. If you find a better deal than I did on almonds let me know. I ordered my raw almonds through Amazon's subscribe and save for $19.62 for 4 lbs of whole raw almonds ($4.90 per lb.).

Here is my price breakdown for almond milk
*All prices based on a quart
1 lb of almonds makes 3 quarts of milk - $1.63 a quart
Amazon- $4.58
Acme- $4.69 on sale from $5.79
Local Health Food Store- $3.49

There are two methods for making almond milk at home- soaking or sprouting. It is relatively the same time and process but with sprouting you leave the almonds soaking at room temperature or you can soak them in the fridge. I have made both versions now and think I prefer sprouted, sprouted almonds are easier to digest and help your body absorb all of the nutritional value. I am also going to attempt sprouted almond cheese so stay tuned for a separate post- I am still trying to see if I can make the milk and cheese from the same batch of almonds, waste not want not, right?

Homemade Almond Milk
*only use RAW almonds- not roasted.

1. Soak 1 cup of almonds in enough water to cover and either refrigerate overnight (about 8 hours) or leave out on the counter but out of direct sunlight for about 12 hours.
2. Drain the almonds and add to blender with 4 cups of fresh filtered water.
3. Blend until frothy and no large pieces of almonds are visible.
4. Pour the milk through a mesh strainer lined with cheese cloth- you will want to do this if you don't like texture or grit in your milk.

or

4. Pour your milk into a french press coffee maker and plunge down the solids- I was pretty proud of myself for this one- it works great and you can just store and serve in the french press!

Almond milk should keep for 3-5 days in the fridge. Since it is so easy to make I don't double this recipe and just make it every few days.

Since I am interested in saving money and we usually only buy almond milk on sale and typically buy organic cow milk I wanted to try to find a better option for cost- so I  decided to make rice milk. I prefer almond milk but this is a huge cost saver so I may keep a bit on hand for our morning cereal and I will definitely play around with this until I find a version I'm totally excited about.

Rice Milk- recipe from http://moneysavingmom.com/

1 cup of cooked brown rice  (any rice works but we use organic brown for increased nutritional value)

4 cups of water

Blend for 4 minutes unless you have a Vitamix then 2 minutes should do it

Add any flavoring you like- vanilla, honey, chocolate, etc.
No need to strain this one- easy- Done!

The rice milk ends up costing about 15 cents for a quart. I won't even bother looking up the prices for store bought rice milk since I'm pretty sure it costs more than 15 cents a quart, let me know if I'm wrong :)

Tropical Smoothie

Remember I love the saying waste not want not? Well, after making a batch of either rice or almond milk I like to use the dregs (the thick milk at the bottom of the blender) to make a smoothie- it works great, tastes great and the blender is already dirty so why not?
I love making all kinds of smoothies but on this particular day I had a fresh pineapple so I decided to go with it.

1. Cut up a fresh pineapple (or use this cool device to make rings)

2. Add one banana along with half of the fresh pineapple and juice, about a 1/4 cup of flax seed, a dash of vanilla, honey to taste to about a cup of freshly made almond or rice milk (I used almond). *Optional, add a cube of frozen spinach and a cube of sweet potato (I make my sons baby food so I double duty the frozen cubes of purees for smoothies)

Yum!