Almond Milk

I had been drinking almond milk for few months before I got so fed up with those obnoxious little hard-to-recycle 1-quart cartons that I decided to try making my own. I found a recipe and gave it a shot. It turns out that it's really easy and comes out very good. Now I've been making my own almond milk every few days for the last 4 or 5 months. I get my almonds in bulk and use a re-usable cheesecloth (see note at bottom). I use the leftover almond pulp in other baking I do, so my almond milk production has reduced my contribution to the waste stream by a significant margin - and that makes me very happy.

I start with 1 cup of raw, unsalted almonds.

I soak the almonds for at least 6 hours to soften up.

I usually just let them soak overnight and then I make the milk fresh in the morning for my cereal. (I took this picture of the full moon rising over the Atlantic on Jekyll Island, GA)

After the almonds have soaked, I give them a quick rinse...

...and toss them in the blender with 3 cups of water for a total of 4 cups of stuff in the blender.

Then I blend the almonds into the water on the highest setting. I've found that by leaving it blending for a full minute or longer, I get more milk out of the almonds and end up with a finer pulp.

Next I pour the blended almond mixture into a cheesecloth...

...and squeeze all of the milk out through the cheesecloth.

I pour the milk into bottles to store in the fridge. Even my finest milk will start to settle out pretty significantly after 4 or 5 days, so I only make two liters at a time so I don't have to store it that long.

Assuming that I've soaked the almonds overnight, making the milk takes me about 5 minutes in the morning. It is super easy and accomplishes all of my original goals - to have tasty non-dairy milk without all of the packaging. I highly recommend it!

Some final thoughts:

• I've found that my almond milk has a slightly nuttier taste than the commercial stuff. I happen to like it but there are a few things I've tried to play with flavor. I tried substituting about 1/4 of the almonds with cashews. This seemed to mute the almond flavor without adding much from the cashews. I've also added small amounts of vanilla extract, agave syrup or molasses to flavor the milk. I found the results pleasant but I just prefer the plain flavor. I also made chocolate almond milk by adding cocoa powder and agave syrup. That was mighty tasty.
• I now use a muslin cheesecloth that I made. This small change of equipment has been a dramatic improvement for several reasons. The first is that I have much smoother milk with virtually no detectable particulates. Second, it's a much tougher material so I can squeeze a lot more milk out of it without worrying that it will split open and dump almond pulp into my milk. Third, the coarse cheesecloths that you can buy in the grocery store cost about $3 for a square yard or so. I tried washing and reusing one of these cheesecloths once and it completely fell apart. In contrast, I've been using my muslin cheesecloth for a few months and it's holding up very nicely. It is just a funnel shaped piece of unbleached cotton muslin. I just rinse it out after each batch and let it dry in the sun.
• I found a place I can get raw almonds for $3.99/ lb. At this price, I can make a quart of milk for about $1.60. In most stores a quart of almond milk is between $2.50 and $3.50 and comes with all of that horrible packaging. Given that I use a quart of milk in my cereal almost every two days, that small savings adds up pretty quickly. It's also very convenient that I never have to worry about running out of milk. Because the raw almonds store very well, I can get a month's worth of almonds at a time so if I'm out of milk, I just have to soak some almonds before I go to bed and then I can have fresh milk in the morning.
  
• After you've squeezed the milk out, you're left with about a cup of almond pulp. I still haven't figured out exactly what the best thing to do with this is. I put it in all of my bread and into my pancakes, but that doesn't use it up at nearly the rate that I produce it. I tried making crackers with it but because I didn't want to use any flour, they were all crumbly. Recently I tried making cookies by adding banana, peanut butter and honey. These were pretty good and had a much better consistency, but were still a little off. If anyone has any suggestions for almond meal based recipes, I'm all ears. I did find that by blending the milk longer, I got a finer meal which was better to bake with. 

Leaky Faucet

We've had a drip in the kitchen faucet for months now. It's one of those things that isn't a major emergency to take care of, but never lets you forget that it's a problem. Before I could work on the faucet, I needed to shut off the water, but because there was no shutoff valve on the hot water line, I had to shut off the water to the whole house. [I may end up installing shutoff valves but the will be a tale for another day]. When I finally took the thing apart I found that the control ball (this is a single lever faucet) was made of brass and had been rubbing against a steel nub for years. This eventually wore a groove into the ball that created slop in it's motion and prevented it from sitting perfectly in the 'off' position.

As it turns out, my faucet was a Delta compatible style faucet that meant that it had a standard set of replacement parts. I took the damaged control ball down to the hardware store and the plumbing people handed me this little baggie of replacement parts. Fortunately, they now make the control ball out of stainless steel.

Since I got a full set of new parts, I just went ahead and replace the whole mechanism. There are two little spring loaded rubber gaskets that sit over openings where the hot and cold water come into the faucet head that I replaced. Then the ball, and finally this nylon retainer. Another problem was that the notch in the faucet base that is used to keep the nylon retainer properly aligned had become malformed and was preventing the old retainer from seating. I reshaped the notch with a small file to allow the new retainer to sit all the way down onto the control ball.

And now I can sleep at night knowing that I'm not wasting any more water!

Kitchen Step Stool

Our kitchen has a ridiculous number of cabinets, but many of them are all the the ceiling. The only way for someone of my stature to use these cabinets is with a step stool. The stool I had been using just moved out with the last housemate, so I needed to fashion up a new one.

I started by making two side pieces with a square of plywood and two vertical supports for each step.

Then I cut the actual steps from the same synthetic 2x6 stuff.

Once I had attached the actual steps in between the two side pieces, I wanted to put on some type of footies to protect the floor and provide some grip. I cut some short sections out of an old bicycle tire to fashion on for this purpose.

So I flipped over the stool and stapled these guys on.

To make sure that the stool was nice and rigid, I slapped on a diagional piece accross the back of the stool, and put another little board at the bottom to keep it stiff. I finished it off by sanding down all the edges and rough bits so that it won't give splinters. Because of those synthetic boards, the stool turned out to be very heavy, but because of the little footies, it can slide on the kitchen floor without damaging it so I don't mind having such a burly stool.

Milk Box Spout

There was this big box of dry milk sitting in our kitchen for months. I asked my roommate if I could have some because I had finished my little box. She said that she hadn't been using it because she couldn't figure out how to open the box, but that I was welcome to have some. The problem was that the new box didn't have a pouring spout so I decided to install one.

I took the spout off the old box.

Then I cut a flap in the new box to match the shape of the spout.

The spout has two little teeth that stick through and fold over the flap to secure it on. I had to cut two little slits in the flap to accommodate these teeth.

Next, I mounted the spout to the flap by inserting the teeth through the slits I cut and then bending them over to secure the spout on.

I had to bend down the corners of the spout to catch the inside of the box so that the spout wouldn't just articulate all the way out of the hole.

Final step: Pinch the two sides together and insert through the hole.

In conclusion, the spout it works alright. More careful construction would have resulted in a tighter fit, but it still pours fine.

Compost

I wanted to start composting in my back yard, but I needed the right container for it. My ideal setup was a plastic 50-gallon drum, but after weeks of regularly checking all the best dumpsters in town, I had turned up nothing. I was ready to give into the man and actually BUY one. No sooner had I given up, I was out on a ride and happened upon one in a ditch along the road.

I didn't have the right bike to carry it at the time so I sped home to grab my hauling bike and retrieve my new compost bucket.

To keep it from tipping over, I tied it to the fence in the corner of my yard with an old inner tube. I just leave it open to the air which seems to work pretty well. I also got a little hoe that I keep in there so I can turn it over each time I deposit new material. My understanding is that by keeping the compost aerated, it will go a lot faster.

I found this little 1.5 gallon ice cream tub (also along the road) that we keep in the kitchen to collect food scraps. I make a habit of thoroughly washing this each time I empty it to keep it from getting too manky.

Magnetic Knife Rack

This is not a new trick and not the first time I've used it in my kitchen, but I thought I'd share this slightly novel execution. For the same reasons I like to have my frying pans and cutting board easily accessible in the kitchen, I like my knives to be at my immediate disposal. To that end, I typically mount a magnet somewhere prominent and just stick the knife to it. In this kitchen, I have a stainless steel hood over the range that was the perfect location for the knives.

I stuck little bar magnets on the underside of the hood [one for each knife]


Here's the back view with knives in place


And there's what it looks like from the outside. In my last kitchen, I didn't have the luxury of mounting the magnet UNDER a surface, but it still worked just fine to stick it to the outside of the microwave and put the knife directly on it. I think that I probably covered the magnet over with ducttape to make sure it didn't come off with the knife and also to protect the magnet from rusting [both problems inherently avoided by this setup].

KitchenAid

I don't own a KitchenAid mixer but I was recently thinking about how having one might serve to expedite a few of my food preparation tasks, so I decided to finally follow up on an idea I had a long time ago.

I went down to the thrift store and after a little searching, I found exactly what I needed; a complete set of mixer heads [$1.50].

The basic premise is that I already have a perfectly good mixer, I just needed the heads. These ones chuck up perfectly in my drill and it's great because I have a variable speed trigger so I can precisely control the mixing speed. The other added benefit is that I can go in either direction as may befit the situation.

Action shot: mixing up some bread dough

It worked pretty well, but I don't know that this method represents a major improvement over mixing and kneading by hand. I'm not sure but it actually felt a little slower. I think the benefits will be more clear with cookie dough and whisking eggs.

Bowl Repair I

I got a big crack in this plastic bowl that has spread to a point where I can no longer ignore it.

The first step in preparing to glue the crack is to clamp it so that it comes out flush. In addition to just having a smooth product, it will be a stronger repair if the two sides are well aligned.

The next step in preparation for a glue job is to clean off the surfaces to be glued. In this case, GooGone is the solvent of choice.

For this job I've chosen a fancy high-viscosity gel-type super glue so that it won't run all over the bowl and the clamp. My hope is to create a more low-profile repair for the bowl.

After the first half dried, I clamped, cleaned and glued the rest of the crack. I added a little section of coat hanger as a splint to reinforce the repair up at the edge where it will receive the most abuse.

NOTE: I labeled this post 'Bowl Repair 1' to remind me that I still have another bowl waiting to be repaired.

Kitchen Hooks

I like to have my cutting board and frying pans hanging behind the stove so I can just grab them when I need them, and because I can just put them back after washing them without taking up a lot of space in the drying rack. The adhesive plastic hooks I was using are just fine for the cutting board and the small frying pan, but they kept breaking under the weight of the larger pan. After I replaced the third one in 6 months I decided that I needed a better solution. I needed something with a little more give than the plastic, so I chose coat hanger.

The original hook

To accommodate the shape of the new hook, I had to shave down the end of the handle so it was a little thinner. This prevents it from bumping into the hook as much when going on and off.

I bent a short section of wire into a hook that would sit flush against the surface of the stub of the old hook and affixed it with a little super glue.


And it works like a charm