Coffee Test

Let me start this post by saying that despite working at Starbucks for several years in college, my coffee is really mostly cream and sugar and a splash of coffee.  I switched to splenda a couple years ago in an effort to save some calories.  I use enough vanilla creamer to turn my coffee a light brown color.  And it’s delicious.  I was really dreading giving up my coffee creamer to go unprocessed.  A friend suggested almond milk since it would be sweeter than regular milk.  Brilliant.  Tom and I read every label on every brand of almond milk at Aldi and Giant and were unable to find one without sugar added (seriously… everything has sugar in it!  It’s ridiculous).  No problem, I’ll just make my own. 

HAHAHAHA.  That was a failure.  I’m actually not sure if it was a failure or if my blender just sucks.  Anyone made almond milk before?  Take a look at my pics and let me know if mine looks normal.  Ok so here’s what I did:

Soak 1 cup of almonds in water all day.

Drain the almonds.

Blend the almonds and 3 cups of water until smooth (except it never really got smooth).

Use a strainer and funnel to strain out some almond pieces.

(Seriously... look at how much almond that is.
And this is only 1 of 3 cheese cloths I used)

After realizing how badly I did the above step… I used a cheese cloth to strain out more almond.  I went through 3 pieces of cheese cloth because there was so much almond that it kept building up and not letting and liquid through. 

After all was said and done I only had 1 cup of almond milk.  I feel like 4 cups worth of ingredients should have yielded more.  I really think my blender is to blame.  It is a hand me down from my sister in law and isn't even a blender- it’s a smoothie maker.  My neighbor is letting me borrow her magic bullet today to try again and see if it works any better.  I see another purchase in our future….

Anyway… this post started out about coffee and I got really sidetracked by my almond milk fiasco.  Back to the coffee.  This morning I decided to have a coffee taste test to find an unprocessed way to drink coffee and still enjoy it.

First up… coffee with stevia in the raw and almond milk.  I tasted it with just the Stevia before I added the almond milk… it was good but I need the milk.  Added almond milk… still good.  Tasted a little thin after I added the almond milk but I think that’s because of my issues with making the almond milk. 

Second cup… just almond milk.  Good but lacking a little bit of the sweetness I like.

Third cup… (side note: can you tell I’ve had three cups of coffee by the amount of jumping around I’m doing in this post…) Honey and almond milk.  Delicious!!!  I was really surprised that I like the coffee with honey in it.  Unfortunately, honey has 60 calories per TBS and stevia has none… so I will probably be sticking to stevia and almond milk for my daily coffee and save the honey for weekends.

 Now to make use of all the caffeine in my system and get to cooking!  On today’s agenda: hummus, more almond milk, maple oatmeal raisin cookies, meatballs, mayo and bread.