By Paul Jarvis
Let’s have a candid talk about milking nuts. Yes, it’s a running joke with myself and my ebook, but I talk about it because I care. Let me dispel some myths about making your own nut milk.
1. It’s easy. Takes me no more than 5 minutes start to finish. I put a bowl of almonds in water before I go to bed. In the morning I rinse them, blend with about 5-6 times more water than nuts and strain them through a nut milk bag into a container. That’s it. I don’t bother adding anything else to it (do that later if you want, by adding: agave, maple syrup, vanilla, cacao, etc) and the whole process is over as fast as my coffee can percolate.
2. It’s cheap. Cheaper than buying a carton of soy or almond milk in the store. I buy bulk nuts online for about 60-70% less than stores sell them for. In Canada, I use realrawfood, and in the US you can even order large bags of organic nuts from Amazon (I’m sure there are other suppliers). I get almost 30 1.9L mason jars of nut milk per 5lb bag of almonds, which is what, less than $2 a jar? Better than the $5/carton I could pay for organic nut milk in the store. Hopefully you’ve got a blender. So your investment is a $10 nut milk bag (which lasts a very long time – mine’s still going after 3 years).
3. It’s better. I dare you to try the best “cartoned” nut milk against some you made yourself. Yours will have at most 3-4 real ingredients. The store-bought kind is full of preservatives and other long-words that don’t sound like food.
4. There’s no waste. Yes, cartons are recyclable, but they also need to manufactured, transported and recycled, then processed all over again. It’s kind of wasteful (recycling is the least useful ‘R’ in ‘reduce, reuse, recycle’). If you order big bags of nuts, you’re not using or creating a HUGE whack of packaging. The earth with french kiss your face for using less stuff.
5. It’s funny. Think of all the jokes (most of which I’ve used to death) you can use with your friends and co-workers about making your own nut milk each week. It doesn’t get old.
So go forth and start milking nuts!
