Homemade Milk

This is really the beginning of my posts about food and when I learn to navigate round this blog more I will try and put posts in categories.

I started making homemade milk 4 months ago as I had read about the side effects of Soya milk on children who have been using it long term. I hadn't started my blog at that time so I obviously couldn't post about it. The side effects of Soya milk that I was concerned about for my youngest son was that it could cause infertility in young men. Now maybe they are wrong, but I don't want to risk his health when it's not that hard to change to something else. Stefan has been soya milk for 10 years and I have been looking....


for an alternative for a year or so but not with any real conviction. While reading on the Internet about food I came across homemade Almond milk and Rice milk. I looked into it further and found there where a lot of other milks I could make at home.
Almond milk was my first conquest and easy peasy it was too. Some of the instructions on the Internet that I had read and some You tube videos said to blanch the almonds to get the skin of. But the first thing to be done is to soak them for 8 hours plus and I found that the skins just pop off with a bit of a squeeze. I didn't want to blanch them in boiling water when I wanted make Raw milk. I blended the almonds with water strained them through a jelly bag and added some vanilla extract (without the alcohol) and that's it! It tasted lovely. Next was the rice milk. Lots of articles said to cook it then blend it but again I wanted Raw milk. So I soaked it in the fridge over night then blended it and strained it. The rice milk didn't need any vanilla extract. I also tried oat milk which Stefan liked but it was very yukky to make. I didn't like straining it with the jelly bag in my hands as it was all gloopy.

It took a little while to get used to changing from cows milk for me and from Soya for Stefan. But we managed it. The homemade milk doesn't go with everything and it has made us rethink our breakfast routine, away from cereal to other things. Which can only be good. After I had made several milks we started trying shop bought almond milk etc. just in case I didn't always get the milk made in time. Some of them were OK but others weren't. Coconut milk was lovely and we use that as a standby. I made one batch of coconut milk, it was delicious but very rich. If anyone is interested in knowing our views on the commercial milks please feel free to ask and I will give you the details of the different milks and makes.

One of the things we like the best with the almond milk is Ovaltine. I can't believe that I've got to 51 without knowing how gorgeous that was.
We have evolved in mixing the almond milk with the rice milk which is what we do most of the time. My next milk to try is hemp milk. I will post my findings.