Making Almond Milk at Home

This recipe doesn't fall under the cheaper category. It does fall under healthier because you know what's in it category.
Let's make home made almond milk!
It's pretty easy and doesn't involve a lot of work. Most of it is time... time to soak the almonds, time to stain the almonds, etc.

 Here's what you need:

2 cups raw and organic almonds

A bowl of water

4 cups water (not included in the soaking water)

Agave Syrup

• Place the almonds in a bowl and cover with about an inch of water. They will plump as they absorb water. The almond milk is creamier when you let them soak longer so shoot for about 18 hours if you can. We did it over night and through the next morning.
• Drain the almonds and rinse them off. They will be all puffy. Perfect! Discard the soaking water because it contains phytic acid, which affects the body's ability to absorb nutrients.
•  Place the almonds in the blender and cover with 4 cups of water. You can do two bacthes in the blender here if your belnder isn't big enough or strong enough.
• Blend at the high speed for 2 minutes. The water will turn white and the almonds will be reduced to tiny tiny tiny pieces.

• Strain the almonds through cheese cloth or any other very fine strainer that you would use for jelly.

• After it has drained for about 15 mins, then gather up the material around the remaining paste and press or squeeze as hard as you can. I choose to put a small plate on top and then put a heavy weight on top of that. I let it sit for another 15 minutes.

• Add your agave to taste. I added 5 drops at a time and taste tested it as we went along. In our house, 20 drops was the go to amount for this much almond milk.
• Seal up what ever you aren't drinking right now and store it in the fridge for 2-3 days.
• I also put some in the freezer, but we haven't tried that yet to let you know how it worked. I will update when we do.

Now here's the part where you can be super frugal. You can make the remaining almond paste into almond flour which is great for baking. Spread the left over almond paste into very thin layers onto your dehydrator tray (as though you were making fruit roll ups) and dehydrate at 120 for about 8 hours. 

Dehydrating time will totally vary based on how wet and or thin yours is. So check it at 8 hours and run it for more if you need to. You should have super dry chips when you're done. Run these through a coffee or herb grinder until it's floury dust and store in air tight container.

Let us know how yours turns out. We love it and are very happy to know the origin of our food and exactly what's in it!

Also feel free to follow us on Facebook to join our HHF Tribe! 

Dehydrating Apples for Healthy Snacking

So we just dehydrated apples because we had quite a few and I didn't want them to go to waste. Apples are very easy to dehydrate and make a great snack. Especially for the healthy New Year New You : )

I use my Excalibur Dehydrator, which I love. 

Frankly I don't do anything to prep the apples, like citric acid or lemon juice, because I find that they come out just fine without adding anything to them. (There are links below to directions should you decide that you do want to do this, but our pics show that you don't really need to do this step).

1. Slice your apples. Peel them first if you'd like. We don't do that, but you could.
I use my handy dandy apple slicer to get uniform and thin slices and plop them on the trays. 
2. Sprinkle lightly with cinnamon. (optional)
3. Dehydrate at 135 degrees (F) for 6-8 hours. This batch went in for 8 hours because these McIntosh and Delicious Apples were pretty juicy. 
4. Store them anyway that works best for you.

You can seal them in bags or jars and they will last 4-6 weeks. 

You can also use your Foodsaver to have them last longer.
I save all glass jars from anything, like spaghetti sauce, gravy... and use the jar sealer attachment on my food saver to seal them up. You can also, of course, use mason jars. 

You can also add another hour or two to the process and dry them all the way to apple chips. Apple chips last longer because more of the water is removed. My family just prefers the regular apple slices less dry.

This link gives some directions for ascorbic acid and lemon juice to keep your apples from browning during the process if you'd like to include that step. Again, I don't because it's never been an issue for me. 

You can check out our dehydrating dog treats page if you're in a dehydrating frame of mind. 

making homemade yogurt in dehydrator

This weekend we decided to try making yogurt at home. To me, this isn't as much making yogurt as it is making yogurt into MORE yogurt, since you need to have some yogurt already to do this.

2 quarts milk

3/4 cup plain yogurt with live cultures

First you heat 2 quarts of milk (any kind of milk works) to 200 degrees fahrenheit. This part takes forever. The longest time is between 180 and 200 degrees for some reason. Also for some reason, I love the smell of super warm milk. As soon as it passed 150, I was in scent heaven. I did not use a double boiler because I have the patience of a flea but it also means constant stirring to prevent burning. I did fine without it, but it's not stupid to use one.

Get your dehydrator warming up to 120 degrees at this point. I also put my jars in the dehydrator now to get them warm.

As soon as it hit 200 degrees, you place the whole pan in a sink full of cold water to start dropping the temperature down to about 120 degrees. This happens fairly quickly, so have your yogurt starter ready. I put my 3/4 cup plain yogurt in at around 130 degrees because the yogurt was cold and I wasn't sure how fast it would drop the overall temp.

Once you hit 120 degrees, you place it in containers ( I use pint sized mason jars ) and pop it into dehydrator for 4 to 8 hours. The amount of time is dependent on how thick/creamy you like your yogurt. I checked mine at 6 hours and left it in for the whole 8 hours. I dried some banana chips and tomatoes while this was going to make best use of energy being spent having the dehydrator run. I know it's a nominal amount of energy, but I feel better making use of everything that I can.

It turned out really great. The flavor is also based on the type of starter yogurt that you use. I used greek yogurt. You may also get a skin on the top of your yogurt. I mixed mine in, but if you are turned off by it, you can toss it.

You will also notice that you created some whey. This can be separated by straining it. You can then use your whey to make bread. Or you can mix it in. I mixed mine in. 

I used some honey to sweeten my newly born yogurt and mixed in some canned cherries from this summer.

It turned out delicious. Even Hubby loved it.

Did I mention you could use this to make your own smoothies?