Monday Love List Number Seven!

Happy Monday all!

As I prepare for a very busy week ahead, I think it is all the more important to remember the things I'm loving right now!

1. Homemade Non-Dairy Milk and "Hippie Vegan Moments"

For my birthday one of my oldest and closest friends made me delicious homemade almond milk and also gifted me my very own nut-milk bag! I had never had homemade almond milk before and man did I love it! It was much creamier than store bought almond milk and was a beautiful bright white color.

Inspired by this wonderful beverage, I decided to use my new nut milk bag and make my own non-dairy milk!

I have been making oat milk myself for a while which gave me the idea of making an almond-oat milk blend! To do so I combined the oat milk recipe and the almond milk recipe from Oh She Glows and the result was amazing!

It was so good it's all gone already!

When I made this, I decided that it would be best to peel my almonds once they had been properly soaked. The original almond milk I had been gifted was made with peeled almonds and that was where the beautiful white color came from. Now, peeling almonds is not as hard as it sounds as the soaked almonds "pop" right out of their skin. However, it does require handling and peeling each individual almond.

As I was doing this, and rather enjoying it, I had a bit of a moment. A moment I self-labeled as a "vegan hippie moment." While I certainly do many things that your average Joe does not, and may not have ever heard of, I don't normally self identify my behavior as that far out or odd. But hand peeling a cup of almonds? I just had to laugh at myself for that one. Nonetheless, I think my almond milk was much better because of that peeling and I thoroughly enjoyed my "hippie vegan moment." I'm quite sure I will have many more in the future!

Now, once my delicious and nutritious almond-oat milk was made, I had left over almond pulp. As I loath wasting food I wanted to find something delicious to do with this pulp, so I made cookies! I used the vanilla almond sugar cookies recipe from Choosing Raw with a few modifications. Namely, I used oat flour instead of almond and sweetened with maple syrup instead of dates. I also baked them for less time than recommended to get more of a cake or macaroon like cookie. They were tasty!

These were gone in less than 12 hours

So, all and all, it's amazing what almonds and oats can do! I especially enjoyed making a combination non-dairy milk as the result tasted much less "oaty" or "almondy" than either milk does alone, instead having a unique and mild yet delicious flavor.

2. So Much Produce!

On most days, my small section of our very small fridge as well as my produce bin are completely stuffed to the brim with fruits and veggies. After my trip to the farmer's market this weekend this is especially true! For six dollars I got all of this produce!

Three different types of kale and one giant zucchini!

Yummy yummy! I have since made multiple kale salads made with all three types of kale! How cool is that?!

3. So Many Desserts to Make!

So many of the blogs I follow have been posting mouth-watering dessert recipes lately! I normally avoid making entire dessert dishes for myself as I will just eat the whole thing immediately, as we saw with the almond cookies. However, these recipes have made me question this decision!

Just today Keepin' It Kind posted adorable double chocolate truffles, along with an inspirational story about keeping things simple. Oh She Glows has also been posting intriguing dessert recipes including raw almond butter cups and dark chocolate pie. Stepping away from all the chocolate (although really when can you have too much chocolate!?), Healthy Bitch Daily just posted a collection of fruit popsicle recipes which look sure to cool down any hot summer day!

My only problem now is deciding which of these many recipes to try first!

Well, it seems I am loving a lot of food this week! But then again, what's wrong with having a love affair with healthy and delicious food?

On that note I should turn to my nutrition assignment and get working on all that stuff I have to do this week!

Happy Monday everyone, I hope you have a lot to love and lots of good food this week!