Homemade Nut Milk
My family has never been huge milk drinkers, but I would always have it on hand. Over the years I transitioned from skim (thanks low fat diet) to whole milk. I hated drinking milk as a child as did Lucas. As an adult Lucas doesn’t tolerate dairy well and neither does Elijah and they both suffer from significant gastrointestinal effects when it is consumed. When my pregnancy rash started 20 weeks ago I started doing a lot of research as to the cause and what I could do to control it. One thing that was recommended was going gluten and dairy free. I started this way of eating with a Whole30 and let me tell you, the rash improved drastically, my acne went away, and my stomach felt better.When my in
termittent intake of dairy came to a halt and I was on the quest for the cleanest form of a non-dairy “milk” that I could. So many non-dairy versions contain additives that aren’t the healthiest. I have preferred the taste of Almond Milk instead of Coconut Milk and try to avoid Soy as much as possible. There are a few store bought brands that have decent ingredients (e.g. Califia, Silk to name a couple), but I have always heard how easy it is to make your own, so I took the plunge and bought a Nut Milk Bag.I went searching the internet for the perfect recipe and have always loved wellnessmama.com so I thought I’d give her recipe a try. I had picked up some raw almonds from Trader Joe’s so I measured out 2 cups of almonds, 4 cups of water and 1 tablespoon of salt and let them soak overnight. After finishing the process I would likely only soak 1 cup of nuts with 2 cups of water and ½ tablespoon of salt for the milk as I had a lot of nuts left over and didn’t really need them for anything else right now.Soaking 
of nuts helps reduc
e the phytic acid that is naturally found in nuts. Phytic acid is beneficial to the nut, but can cause issues in humans by binding to nutrients in the body and contributing to nutrient deficiencies and gut irritation. So, basically soaking the nuts makes it easier to digest them.I soaked the nuts overnight leaving them on the counter. When I was ready to make the milk I rinsed them well and then put 1 cup of almonds in my Vitamix blender with 4 cups of filtered water. I blended on high for a bout 3 minutes. I ended up doing 2 batches to get 8 cups of milk.I opted not to add any additional sweetener, like dates or stevia, or vanilla. Most of what I use the milk for is baking/cooking and wanted to try a batch without.After it was blended I put the nu
t milk bag in a large bowl and poured the milk in and squeezed it all the milk out. This strained the milk from the almond pulp. I poured all the milk into a large glass pitcher and will store in the fridge for a week. The pulp can be added to smoothies, used in energy balls, or dehydrated and ground up into almond flour. So many great options!It is so delicious and creamy and I love knowing that it is just almonds and filtered water. And, it was easy to make!Almond Milk Recipe- https://wellnessmama.com/366/organic-almond-milk-recipe/How to Soak Nuts- https://wellnessmama.com/59139/soaking-nuts-seeds/