Food Friday: Busy Early Morning Things!

 This morning I started early on getting things done since I need to be free later in the morning.  Things turned out successfully, which is always a pleasing start to the day.  To make this morning successful I had to start last night!  

To make almond milk you need to soak one cup of almonds in water overnight.  I remembered to put the almonds soaking before bed, a real plus.  This morning I drained and rinsed the nuts then put them into the blender with 5 cups fresh water.  They blended for 90 seconds then were strained in a very good nut milk bag.  The link is to the nut bags we bought.  They are SO MUCH BETTER than anything I have used before. I can certainly recommend them for people who are sick of straining nut milk through cheese cloth, paint strainer bags, dish towels, and any number of other not-so-hot options.  I love these.

Earlier I had seen a recipe in the email from #LifeIsNoYoke for making orange juice in the blender so, since I found a package of 6 medium navel oranges in the "almost gone by" shelving at Piggly Wiggly, I decided to give this a try.   The recipe called for 1/2 cup water, 4 peeled oranges, 4 pitted dates, and 1 1/2 cups ice cubes.  I blended this for a minute then poured into a quart jar.  It is a little pulpy for me, but does taste okay.  Dear One will probably love it since he is all for pulp, for some unknown reason.

The orange juice ingredients are in the blender ready to go.  I DID remember to pit the dates.  A very good thing all around!

This is the orange juice ready to be bottled up, then consumed at some point in the future. I presume Dear One will have a slug of it when he returns from his bike ride.

When making almond milk there is always leftover almond pulp.  In the past I have dried it in the dehydrator, ground it up, and used it as almond meal in recipes but this time I left the pulp from two times making milk in a sealed container in refrigerator.  Last night I hauled it out and made a recipe calling for almond pulp, oatmeal, maple syrup, flax meal, and cinnamon. Oh!  And chocolate chips.  You cannot go wrong with chocolate chips!   The pan of mixture needed to bake at 350 degrees F for 35 minutes.  I put it into a silicon loaf pan and baked it a little longer since the pan made it a little thicker than the recipe called for.  

Instead of leaving these bars out to cool, I put it in the refrigerator overnight to "firm up", but mainly to keep the lovely fragrance hidden from the nasty miserable ants that come a-running any time I leave anything on the counter overnight.  So maddening.  We spend a ton for ant eradication every month but somehow the ants have not gotten the message yet that they are not welcome...

Here is a picture of the orange juice, almond milk, and the chocolate chip almond pulp bars.  They do not look that appealing, and, honestly, they are not great, but they are edible which I can say in all truthfulness as I ate some of the scraps that fell off the bars.

Munchie Monday: Cereal Mixture

 Oatmeal has become a constant in our diet/breakfast.  I have already talked about eating dry oatmeal with chopped grapes mixed in.  The other week we did not have any grapes so I put oatmeal in the bottom of the bowl then dumped in a small amount of the mixed lightly sugared cereals that Dear One favors.  With a little homemade almond milk on top, it was pretty good.

Today I did the same but added some fresh from the field strawberries.  Quick. Easy. Tasty!

This is one of those meals where I could say, "Try it.  You will like it!"  Some things lately I have not been so happy with but this is definitely healthier than many cereals and tastes so good.

Quick and Easy and DELICIOUS Vegan Hot Chocolate!

Yesterday Krocks in the Kitchen put up a video on YouTube about 3-Ingredient Vegan Hot Chocolate.  I had the three ingredients so I went down to the kitchen and immediately made some.

BINGO!!!  It is EXACTLY the way I like hot chocolate to taste.  And it is plant-based.

Vegan Hot Chocolate ready to sip.  So good. Also in a new-ish toy!  Love this Yeti mug.  Did NOT love the price.

I made some of this hot chocolate in the VitaMix just the way Jessica said. IT IS SO GOOD!!   You do not need to use a high-speed blender.  If you don't use a high-speed blender just blend for about 90 seconds which should pulverize the dates enough.  Once blended, heat up in the microwave or a small saucepan on the stove.

 I did not have medjool dates. I used deglet noor dates that I weighed in at 40 grams and covered with 1/4 cup boiling water that sat on the counter five minutes, 1 1/4 cup Almond Breeze almond milk and 1 Heaping Tablespoon Hershey's cocoa.

Today I made a double batch so Dear One could have more of a sample than he got last night.  The cocoa was 40 grams in weight so for one serving I will use 20 grams cocoa when I made it again. (A kitchen scale is so handy...)

 Put all these things into the high-speed blender and blend for 3 and 1/2 minutes.  It will come out the perfect temperature to drink.  Steaming hot.  So delicious!!

Munchie Monday

For a long time I have searched for a recipe that was vegan, sort of cheese-y, and tastes good.  Finally I have found it.  There  is a website called lifeisnoyoke.com which has a cashew queso recipe on it.  They really suggest that we all try it. I am glad I did!

You need:
1 cup almond milk
1/4 cup nutritional yeast
1/2 cup RAW almonds
1/2 cup RAW cashews
1 large red bell pepper, deveined and de-seeded
1.5 teaspoons coarse kosher salt
1/2 teaspoon granulated garlic powder
1 teaspoon onion powder—I used dried chopped onions
A pinch of crushed red pepper

Put the wet ingredients into your high speed blender.  Add the rest of the ingredients on top.  Start the blender on low speed then move up to high speed.  Let it blend for 6 minutes.

When you stop blending, the queso is hot and ready to eat.  You can use it as a sauce.  You can use it on macaroni and cheese.  You can use it for a dip.


Things I have done with it:  eaten it out of the blender jar!  Then there was using it for dipping a variety of vegetables and vegetable crackers and tortilla chips.  Most recently I added it to some fairly much dried-out macaroni and cheese.  Dear One served himself a second serving!!  You could have knocked me over with a feather.  Of course, he did not know what he was eating, which was good.  I think.

Food Friday: Homemade Almond Milk and Residue

A recipe I wanted to make called for almond milk.  We did not have any.  We did have almonds.  And water, fortunately! So I made some.

To make it I put 1 cup of almonds in the high speed blender then poured in 3 cups of water.  I used distilled water since I had just gotten some.  After about 3 minutes of blending I shut off the machine and poured the milk through a nut milk bag to remove the very fine pulp.

This is the almond milk pulp that I put in the dehydrator to possibly make into almond flour.  Well, why not try to use everything instead of just throwing it down the garbage disposal, which, by the way, is a marvelously useful piece of kitchen equipment if you do not have a compost pile available.

After a few hours in the dehydrator we had some almond flour!  That makes me happy.  Well, and that is on top of the tasty almond milk which tastes nothing like the almond milk I have purchased at the store.

Not a lot of flour, but still, nice to have it.

Another Yummy Smoothie Drink: Chocolate Banana!

The second recipe try in a row was a winner!  At least I loved it.  Dear One gave me the wavy fingers, but he drank it all and made no negative comments. I consider that a success.  Not a BIG success but still, successful.

This is what I did:

Using our blender, I put in--

1 cup unsweetened Almond Breeze almond milk
1 frozen banana chopped into about 1-inch chunks (I chopped the chunks before freezing, placed them on a tray in freezer.  When frozen, I put them into a plastic bag.)
1 Tablespoon unsweetened cocoa powder
1 Tablespoon ground flax seeds (flax seed meal)

Let the blender roar until the smoothie is, well, smooth.  Probably about a minute in our blender jar.

Pour into a tall glass and enjoy.

You will need a spoon because it is nice and thick and frozen.  Just what I like in a smoothie.  You may, too.

Munchie Monday: Food Failure

Just to add to the list of food failures...I thought I would make a smooth that someone on Facebook posted and said it was great.  News Flash:  It was not.  I can eat almost anything, but this was definitely not pleasing.  A little too gritty.  Having said that, Dear One ate his whole serving!

This is what was in it:

1/2 cup frozen strawberries
1/2 cup frozen cherries
2 Tablespoons lemon juice
1 Tablespoon ground flax seeds
1 teaspoon chia seeds
3 ounces firm tofu, chopped
1 cup almond or other plant milk

Put everything except the almond milk in your sturdy blender (if the frozen strawberries were very large, chop them somewhat).

Healthy smoothie, if you can take it...

Pour the milk on top and blend well.  It makes a nice thick smoothie.

WELL....it was not the best. It was certainly good for you, BUT the taste was not the best.  For one thing, I did not have blueberries which were actually called for in the recipe. 

For the main problem:  we are accustomed to orange juice-based smoothies.  Having an almond milk-based smoothie did not work for our tastes.  You may love it.