We are continuing our talks on How to start a more self-sufficient lifestyle and How to start a self-sufficient food supply.

Last week we did a talk on How to grow your own almond tree from nuts. This week we continue on that same line of thought with things to make with almonds.  Whether you grow your own almonds or buy them, these are easy recipes to add to your regular eating routine.

We gave you a step-by-step on our almond seed saga. As noted at the end of that talk, we do not yet have almonds growing on our baby tree. It will take several years before our baby almond tree will be big enough to produce almonds. But for the sake of time and this post, we will move on. Just make note that the almonds in the rest of this post did not come from our baby almond tree. The almonds we used for these DIY projects were bought from the local grocery.

As we were planning our almond tree patch, we planned for 5 to 10 grown and producing trees. It is good to know what you want to use your product to make regularly so you can gauge how much you will need to produce yearly. This way you can estimate how many trees you will want to grow for yourself.   Or how much you will need to buy regularly.

If growing your own almond trees to produce your own almonds is not doable or not yet, it is ok to buy them. As we said, we do not have any producing almond trees yet but we will. We are buying our almonds right now.

Also, something to remember to help you not get discouraged, no matter how much you are growing or how little, some is better than nothing. Think of it like this, if you only produce a small number of almonds a year, that is still that much less than you have to buy. As we keep saying, this is a process, you can not do it all at once. However much you grow for yourself or make for yourself, is just that much that you do not have to buy.

It is ok to start DIY projects with bought produce, with plans to transition over to more homegrown as you can. Or you may not even want to grow your own nuts, that is ok too. You can still enjoy making your own foods with bought nuts. Again, every little bit is another step in the process.

As we said, our almonds tree is a baby so we bought almonds from the store. We always buy, raw and organic just to be sure what we are getting.

When we decided to start using almonds in our regular meals, we did some research. We found that you can use almonds for all kinds of things. You can, of course, eat them. You can make almond butter, almond flour, almond milk, and many other things.

Here we offer some of the recipes that we have tried and use regularly.  Note, there are many variations on these basic recipes. Everything that you changed will change the flavor outcome just a bit. If you use raw or roasted, salted or plain, you will get a slightly different flavor. You can add herbs, and spices, honey or, sugar to any recipe to give it a slightly different flavor.

First off, just eating almonds is very healthy for you. Almonds are a good, protein snack for the kids. Almonds are easy to carry on the road, to work, or to school. You can do whole almonds or sliced or diced, depending on how you like them.

Recipe One:

We took some of our almonds and toasted them in the oven. This is the quickest way to “make” almond treats.

Put your almonds onto a pan or in our case a castiron skillet and put it in the oven. We use the broil setting but you have to watch it closely or your almonds will be Cajun blackened instead of toasted.
When they are toasted but before the Cajun black stage, take them out of the oven and let them cool.
There you have another easy homemade treat.

Recipe Two:
We then took some of our almonds and rolled them in cinnamon and sugar and toasted them in the oven. Again, very easy process. Take your almonds, put them into a bowl with a lid.

Add a bit of butter or oil and your cinnamon and sugar. Put the lid on the bowl and shake. You can, of course, use any herbs or spices you want to make your gourmet almonds.

Put them on a pan or skillet and put them into the oven. Again, we use low broil but watch out for burning. You can use the regular oven temp settings, it just takes longer to toast the almonds that way.
When the almonds are toasted, take them out of the oven and let them cool.

It is best to put your almond treats in an air-tight container but ours do not really last long enough for it to matter. Like with most homemade treats, they are gone almost as soon as they are cool enough to eat.

Recipe Three:
We tried out hand at making almond flour also. You can go with raw or toasted almonds to use to grind to flour. It seems to be easier to use the toasted almonds as they are already a kind of dehydrated, they make a dryer, softer flour.

This is another simple process but you do need to watch to be sure you get flour and not butter.

Put your almonds into a blender and blend on high. It will make a terrible racket, so just be aware. If you want to go really “old school” you can use a hand grinder, the mortar, and pestle kind. These are very simple tools to use, you can use them for making nut or grain flour. When we say simple, we do not mean easy. This is the long, way that requires elbow grease and time. We went for the electric tool but we do know how to do it by hand if need be.

We used both the blender and food processor.  Both did the job just fine.

It is best to use sliced or chopped almonds to make flour. Not only does it take less time to get flour but it makes less noise in the blender.
Also, as we know from experience, large pieces in the blender can burn up your blender motor. Yes, we did that once with large chunk, chocolate chips, not making almond flour.

Put your almonds into your blender or food processor. Run on high but watch carefully. Do not blend long enough to make butter. You want a nice fine, flour consistency.

Using the blender.

Using the food processor.  You can see the results are about the same.

Once you have the flour, stop the blender. Our almond flour comes out more the consistency of cornmeal than the commercial flour you buy. But that is not an issue with our household.

Put your almond flour into an air-tight container. It is best to put your homemade almond flour in the fridge or freezer to preserve it as there are no preservatives as you would get in commercially made products. To us, this is a good thing and one of the reasons we like to make our own.

There you have now made your own, homemade almond flour. You can now get ready to use your almond flour in recipes. Most recipes you can alter to use almond flour instead of regular flour.

Of course, as we keep saying, you do not have to go all or nothing. If you want to try almond flour, you can buy it and use it in recipes in place of regular flour. The store-bought almond flour will have a more soft, fine consistency than what you make at home.

Recipe Four:
We ground some of our raw almonds to make almond butter. The homemade almond butter has a different texture than store-bought. Our almond butter was a bit thicker and not as creamy as commercial but the flavor was good. It seems that there are many variations of how to make almond butter, raw, toaster, salted, etc.

The basic recipe for making almond butter:
2 cups almonds
2 teaspoons veg oil
dash of salt, to your taste

We do not add salt to our almond butter.

Put your ingrediants into your food processor and blend. It will take a while to get the creamy butter consistency but give it time.

It is best to watch your processing and be sure to stop now and then and scrape the bowl to get all the almond pieces back into the mixing bowl. This is the same as when you are making a cake or any other recipe that calls for heavy mixing. So scrape the bowl now and then while you are checking to see if you have the consistency you want.

Once you get it as soft and creamy as you want it, stop. You have made homemade almond butter.

As with most homemade items, your almond butter will not be exactly like the store-bought processed almond butter. Your almond butter may be a bit dryer or coarser than what you buy at the store but that is ok. This is your project and your own handmade almond butter, it is not store processed. And is that not the point? You do not want processed, you want homemade.

This is the same process you would use to make homemade peanut butter if you want to give that a try. We have done both.

We did not go as far as to make our own almond milk but it can be done if you want to go there. There are several recipes you can find online for making almond milk at home. We may try our hand at that latter but for now, we have not.

You can also find several recipes for making your own vegan butter using almonds instead of dairy. We have not tried that but it can be done.

As with most DIY and homemade items, there are so many variations and different ways to use your ingrediants. Do your own research and experiments to see which ones you like and which ones fit your needs. It never hurts to try different things, it may not go as planned but then at least you will know if you want to do it again or not. As we have said before, this is a process to add things to our life puzzle. Each new experience brings at least knowledge if not a new favorite hobby. And who knows, you may find a new way to do things that you did not even know you wanted to know about.

We hope you have enjoyed this talk on recipes for almonds and homegrown almonds. Please try out some of these recipes and see what you like. Take pride in your handmade work and enjoy. Get the kids involved and let them try their hand at using almonds. The kids will get a charge out of taking their own handmade treat to school with them or sharing with their friends. How many kids can tell their friends that they made these treats by hand?

Thank you for visiting and please come again for another edition of Out Standing in the Field.