Almond butter and milk

Yesterday was a proper Sunday. Where I am from (France) absolutely everything is closed on Sundays so you usually stay home or go for a walk and do the things you don't have time for during the week. We finally got our new washing machine after two weeks (I think we have the worse landlord that has ever been) and the housewife in me got a bit carried away. I hate doing the laundry but when you end up having to go to the laundrette for the bare essentials and pile up the rest, it feels good to wash at home in a fancy new machine with a dryer. We basically had the washing machine on all day. We finally printed out our order of ceremony and name tags for the wedding. And to have a "break" from all this (our printer is not the best and it took us quite a while) I cooked. I had a bag of almonds sitting in the kitchen for a while now but I was always too busy - or lazy -  to make butter and milk out of it. I had 2 cups worth of almond, I did half and half. You would need a blender rather than a food processor. Mine was too wide and the butter didn't work out great as the almonds would just stick on the sides and wouldn't be processed properly.

Almond Butter

Ingredients:

• Raw bleached or unbleached (with or without the skin) unsalted almonds - you can roast them for a stronger taste. With 1 cup of almonds, I filled half of a jam jar.

Recipe:

• Put in the blender and blend. That's it. Blend for a few minutes and stop to scrape the almonds from the sides and make sure your blender is doing alright. In total you should mix for 10-15 minutes.

• It's ready. Just need to transfer it in a sealed glass jar and keep it in your fridge.

Almond Milk

Ingredients:

• Raw bleached or unbleached (with you without the skin) unsalted almonds
• Water - 3 cups of water for 1 cup of almonds

Recipe:

• Put the almonds in a bowl and cover with water. Leave to soak from 6 hours.
• Drain and rinse the almonds.
• Put in the blender with the water.
• Blend for a few minutes until you get a milk like consistency.
• Strain the mixture using a cheese cloth for example.
• You can keep it in the fridge for 3 or 4 days.

Sorry for the lack of pictures of the milk process but the almonds floating in water in my food processor is not the best of sights.