Almonds Everywhere!

Sprouts recently had a bulk almond sale for $3.99 a pound of raw nuts.  I jumped on it, before I learned that you should buy refrigerated nuts because the natural oils can go rancid quite fast and who knows how long anything has been sitting out in the bulk section of your grocery store.  I'm not sure yet if the cheap side of me will win this one; I may continue to buy bulk nuts that are on sale in favor of refrigerated nuts simply because of the price difference.

At any rate, the almond sale means I've been making a lot of things using almonds.

I made almond milk last week that was delicious.  I turned it into an awesome tapioca pudding (I love tapioca pudding!).  I also ate some cereal with it, because sometimes convenience wins - I should just stop buying cereal altogether at this point.

I made almond meal/flour with the ground nuts leftover from the milk making process.  To do that, all you need is an oven or dehydrator to dry out the nut meal.  Once it's dry, if you want a finer texture toss it into a blender or food processor for a minute or so, depending on how fine a texture you're looking for.
I mentioned in my last post that I was going to try making flour-less brownies with it, but what I ended up making was a batch of thumbprint cookies.  They turned out deliciously, I'll definitely be making them again.

I also made a batch of almond butter with the extra 3 cups of nuts leftover from soaking for the milk.  All you need to make almond butter is a food processor and some patience.  I might play around with adding things like cacao powder for a chocolate butter, or honey or something, but you really don't need to add anything.  The only thing you should be sure of is that your nuts are properly dried after soaking.

After making my own almond butter I've decided that I'm never buying nut butter from the store again.  It's so easy to just make your own, and it tastes a ton better.

Actually, all this writing about almond butter is making me crave it.  I'm gonna go have some.