Homemade Almond Milk

Phase 3 of The Juice Generation includes instructions on how to create your own homemade raw nut milk. I was really excited to give this a try because I don't really like dairy milk. I'm an ovo-lacto vegetarian, so, yes, I do consume dairy products and I fricking love cheese...but not so much the cow milk.  I've found that cow's milk generally works best for recipes that call for milk, so we do buy it occasionally, but it can be a chore to try and finish that milk before it goes bad.

It actually turned out to be pretty simple to make our own almond milk. You start by soaking 1 cup of raw almonds in a bowl of water for 8-12 hours.

Drain nuts and toss the soaking water, then place the nuts in a blender with 5 cups of filtered water.  You can vary the ratio of nuts to water depending on your personal preferences.

Blend until you see the nuts pulverize and the liquid turn creamy white.

Place a nut milk bag over the sides of a bowl, and pour the liquid slowly in. Lift the bag up, pull the drawstrings tight, and twist and squeeze to extract all the milk. You can store this in a glass jar for for 3-4 days.

We took it a step further to make Vanilla Almond Milk, so we added in a vanilla bean and six dates and gave it another good blend.

With the work all completed, the first order of business was to heat up some fresh almond milk for a mug of hot chocolate!