Super Lazy Almond Spread

I'm not going to lie. This stuff is not amazing. It's nothing like almond butter. It goes to show that if you're bothered to put the effort into something, it will turn out great. The opposite is true in this: I didn't try and so the result was not so fabulous. But I knew it wouldn't be spectacular, and I didn't try to make it spectacular, so that's ok. This stuff comes down to versatility, patience and time

I soaked a big batch of almonds nearly a week ago and they've dried a bit on the outside but they're nowhere near dehydrated. I wanted to make almond butter with almonds in this weird middle state so I popped a few in the blender and carelessly knocked the power to high.

And after a few scrapes and moving-of-chopped-almondy-bits and spooning around in there, I had spready, kinda oily stuff. It was chunky - super chunky at that, I found some whole almonds in there - and moist from the water but it was a quick almond butter style spread. And because the almonds are soaked, you won't feel like you've swallowed a brick when you eat a massive spoonful.

90% of the time, my nut butters just get blended into my smoothies so it doesn't really matter what it looks like or how moist it feels. What DOES matter to me, though, is the time it takes to make, and the cleaning up, which this nutty spread doesn't require a lot of.

So if you're really looking for an easy way to making nourishing nut stuff, have a try of this. You probably don't have to wait a week for the nuts to be in the fridge, but make sure they're not dripping wet or anything. They should only be moist on the inside.

But I'm just going to say, it's not the same as true almond butter.

Mistakes I've Made - Activated Almonds

Yesterday I mentioned that I made my own almond meal using my 'failed' almonds. How do you just fail a nut?

As I've mentioned in a previous post, you have to soak nuts for them to not stuff up your insides, so when I came back from Costco with a big bag of almonds the other day, I decided to try to soak them all at once and dehydrate them so that I can just eat them without worrying about soaking overnight.

The bag was emptied into a big bowl, the almonds were blanketed with water, and a splash of apple cider vinegar was stirred in. Ok, maybe a big splash of vinegar. I didn't really know how much to add so I just kinda poured it in.

And they sat in the cupboard with a tea towel lid overnight.

In the morning I rinsed them and preheated the oven to I think it was 150 degrees to start with. Once the almonds were patted dry with paper towels, I lined a few cookie trays with baking paper and spread out my now-expanded almonds between them because there were that many of them. I popped the trays in the oven like so and checked them every half hour. I advise you not to check this often; it makes you feel like your nuts have taken a lifetime and nothing has happened since you last visited.

Grains in a Nutshell

In this post, whenever I say 'grains', I mean:

- grains

- legumes
- beans

- nuts

- seeds

so just include all those when I use the word 'grain', got that?

You might have noticed that my posts could sometimes say things like 'This is paleo so I'll eat it' or 'Preferably, soak/sprout the grains' and it might pique your interest as to why I tend to shy away from grains.

I would like to stress that I AM NOT ON A LOW CARB DIET. I don't do diets. Especially low carbs, because you need carbs for energy.

The reason why I put grains to the side is not because of what they give you (lots of energy), but what they take away from you. There's more to those nasty little buggers than meets the eye.

I could go on for hours about why you shouldn't eat grains, which grains are better for you, who can eat more grains than others, ways to sub grains, grains that aren't actually grains, health benefits of grains, but I just wanted to make a short little post so that you guys can get a bit of a taste as to why grains aren't as great as they're made out to be.

Have you ever wondered