Almond milk

The almond milk that you buy commercially is a cruel joke perpetrated against the innocent and well-meaning. The almond milk that you buy at the tiny juice stores is the real deal. I thought their recipe was exotic with dates for sweetness and pink sea salt for more body and for emphasis. Who does that? A new-age pseudo-science-y modern day hippy self-diagnosing nutritionalist, that's who. But I am wrong again. It turns out the recipe is quite common on YouTube. They are all doing the same thing.

* raw almonds
* dates
* vanilla bean
* sea salt
* purified water

All recipes instruct to soak the almonds. Most sweeten with dates, some use figs or something else. Some recipes use vanilla extract. All recipes specify sea salt.

Oddly, some recipes mix 2 cups filtered water with 1 cup pre-soaked almonds. While other recipes mix 3 cups filtered water with 1 cup pre-soaked almonds.

Here is a top secret that I learned from watching an extensive video on almond cultivation. People in the almond business in California pronounce "almond" with a silent "L." They say "amond." Amond, amond amond, amond, amond throughout the whole area while immediately outside the area everyone says, "almond." It drives you nuts. 

Where in the Himalayas do you imagine there to be salt mines? Pink Himalayan sea salt is actually mined in Afghanistan. So then, Pink Himalayan sea salt should be named properly Pink Afghanistan sea salt but nobody would buy that crap. What a total burn on Afghanistan. They need something a little less remindful of Islamic fundamentalism to successfully market the salt. The whole thing is marketing. And the Afghanistan people put up with this because the profits by this marketing deception are so fine. They are okay with that. Pulling one off on all westerners. So just shut up about pink Himalayan sea salt.

Use Pink Hawaiian instead, if you must have pink salt.

Wow. My fingertips smell like vanilla. 

I am told continuously in two languages to wash my hands to rid them of coronavirus. I live alone here. Absolutely nobody comes in and out of here, except for deliveries and Jennifer. So just for that irritating tautology and because my fingers smell intoxicatingly exotic, I will wash them when 

I 

feel

like

it.

Like maybe right now. I'm tired of vanilla-fingers already. 

Ew, sick.

Two cups of raw almonds soaked overnight.

Brittany sea salt produced by normal people who name their salt by the place that it comes from, not some other nearby more acceptable location. 

[Right here goes photos of all the action. Soaked nuts sitting in six cups of fresh filtered water fed through the machine. This left quite a lot of moist crumbly material and three cups of water. The processed material is put into the filtered water. It swells. The processed material is re-processed so that all the filtered water is used. The second processing produces deep liquid the same as the first run. ]

Okay, so this is a quart and a half, and that's what, three pints. Right?

These are $9.00 each at the juice shop. So this represents $27.00 over there. Is it worth the trouble of making it? 

I do not know. For me this was massive difficulty. No it wasn't. Yes it was. The hand thing. I move around like a sloth. It took for-ev-er because I am so slow at everything. And you would think that I moved forward since I now have three pints of top almond milk while I actually moved backward. There is a bigger mess to clean up. I still have to clean the machine. I have to clean up the whole kitchen but I keep getting farther behind. 

          But how does it taste?

It tastes fantastic. Better than anything similar.

          So there you go.

There I go what?

         You win. You are getting ahead.

Conclusion: Win.

Extensive video on almond cultivation in California, a world to itself where everyone mispronounces the name of their endeavor on purpose to vex us. It is awesome. It will blow your mind.