Almond Milk & Extracts

First off: Fuck you, Silk soymilk. I naively drank this in quite significant quantities(not necessarily drank, but used it in all kinds of cooking as well) and was therefore messed up for the rest of this week due to the corn in it. However, I have now recovered and have time/energy to tell of the many things I created this week.

The first thing I made this week were extracts. I made spicy pepper oil and peppermint extract(both still brewing actually). The oil is absurdly easy to make, just take two hot peppers per quart of olive(or your preferred) oil, chop them up, put them in a mason jar and let them sit for a few weeks, shaking every few days. I would recommend using Serrano peppers in the mixture, but you can use whatever kind that you prefer depending upon how hot you want it; either way, make sure no seeds are wasted. After the few weeks run through a fine colander or cheesecloth and store it like a normal oil.

After my realization that pretty much all toothpaste in existence has corn in it(I've heard Tom's Of Maine "Silly Strawberry" does not but I cannot verify this), I started using a 4:1 mixture of baking soda and hydrogen peroxide as my toothpaste. Cheap? Yes. Terrible Tasting? Yes. Hence, the want of peppermint extract to mix into the paste to make it slightly less horrendous tasting. To make it, buy a fresh bunch of mint, pull it all apart, bruise the mint with a mortar and pestle(or with whatever you have handy, they're friggin' leaves), put it all in a mason jar. Fill the jar until the mint leaves are just covered with potato vodka. Potato vodka is superior due to a complete lack of corn, fairly neutral flavor, and not being overly expensive for a quality product. I used Luksusova and it cost $13 for a fifth of it, so it wasn't that pricey(or that bad tasting). Let this sit for 2-3 weeks depending upon how strong you want it; Strain it through a cheesecloth when finished.

Since I can't have any soymilk around here and I'm now weary of even the unflavored rice milk, I decided to make my own nut milk. Since the nut I have the most of is almonds, almond milk was the one I chose to make(that and almond milk is the most commonly made one and I'm new at this). The recipe for making the milk is as follows, read the comments after it before you start making it though:

1/2 cup raw almonds(or other nut/seed)
2 cups cold water
1 tbsp natural sweetner(I prefer agave nectar)
1/4-1/2 tsp vanilla(make sure it's corn-free! Mine is from Mexico)

Crush the nuts into fairly small chunks and then grind them finely inside of a coffee-grinder. If you don't crush them first the size of the almonds will impede the grinding process. Pour the nut powder into the blender with one cup of cold water, the sweetener, and the vanilla. Have this whip for at least five minutes. Add the other cup of water slowly to the mixture will it is still mixing and let mix for another five minutes(*If you want more cream for milk or the like then stop before you add this water and just mix longer). Mix for another five minutes. Double layer cheese cloth within a colander and pour in the mixture and allow it to pour through without tampering. You'll probably want to do this yet again to ensure that there are no particulates in your milk, unless you fail to care that much.

A few very important notes about making the milk:
1. I highly recommend getting a separate grinder for nuts if you're going to do this consistently. If not, you will end up with coffee in your nut milk and nut residue in your coffee. Not as nice as one would hope.
2. The nuts powder may very well clump up as its being ground, so make sure it's all going through the machine fine so you don't break it.
3. The second straining is very important if you're using the same grinder as your coffee. Otherwise the bottom of the glass is like gritty coffee.

In the next week I plan to set up vanilla extract seeping, make pickles(I have a large amount of pickling cucumbers from the garden), and I'm heading to Toronto for some shenanigans. Good stuff. Oh, and pictures will return as soon as I get a non piece-of-shit camera. Working on that.