Almond milk...and sweets!

Did you notice the new tab atop?  It's a recipe index, a work-in-progress, as I sprinkle recipes that I have been making throughout my blog posts.  I will keep adding to it as I sift through old posts.

I made a batch of almond milk over the weekend.  I followed this recipe:
Almond milk
 (you'll get 2-3 cups)
1 cup almonds, soaked 8-12 hours beforehand
3 cups water
6 dates or 1/4 cup agave (I used 1/4 cup maple syrup)
1 tsp pure vanilla extract
a pinch of salt

Rinse off your almonds and discard the soak water. Add the almonds and the other ingredients (water, sweetener, vanilla) to a regular blender or food processor. Blend them on high speed.  Then, simply put a cheesecloth or strainer over the top of a jar (and put a rubberband around it to make sure it stays) and scoop the milky pulpy almond over it and let it sit, give it a good 15 minutes.  I took out the almond pulp and put it in a bowl...

...and made cookies (SO many awesome recipes on this blog) with it!!!  By the way, the almond milk turned out wonderfully.  We poured it over homemade granola this morning.

Almond chocolate chip cookies

1 cup dried almond pulp “flour” (I didn't dry mine, so I added about 1/2 cup flour to the mixture)
1/4 cup coconut oil, softened
1/4 cup pure maple syrup
6 tablespoons raw almond butter
2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
1/4 teaspoon fine sea salt
dark chocolate chips, as needed

Mix all ingredients well, except chocolate chips.  Scoop onto baking sheet lined with parchment paper.  My daughter pressed 3 chocolate chips on each one.  Bake 8-10 minutes in an oven heated to 350'F.  Allow to cool (or eat warm, as we did, and the melted chocolate chips are gooey) and enjoy!

We also made bird's nests over the weekend.  We used:

3 tablespoons coconut oil, melted in a pan
1 bag of marshmallows
6 cups crispy rice cereal
5 jelly beans in each one (we got a 15oz. bag of natural color and flavor ones at Trader Joe's for $3.99, made in Ireland, ironic, because on Saturday we old calendar Orthodox Christians celebrated St. Patrick's day!)

After the marshmallows melt, mix in the rice crispies well and form by pressing into bowls, using wax paper, then add jelly beans to look like eggs.  My girls wrapped them in bitty bags and wrote "Happy Easter" on them, put 6 in each of their baskets and passed them out to some of the residents at the nursing home where Rob's Grandma lives....

Doesn't she look cute in my purple sunglasses?  We stopped at Long John Silver's and got some lunch and rootbeer.

Rob played his mandolin at the cemetery, where we spent time at the Grandpa's graveside.  Playing and singing "Amazing Grace," as Grandma holds his music...

♥ the sad place...

To me, the sad place, only exists because of the opposite...the joyful, happy times that we can compare it to.

Hannah and Olivia with their great grandparents in December 2004.  Their great grandpa was a jolly man, always smiling, loved to have the girls on his lap, or snuggle with him when he was bed-ridden.  He passed away in March 2007, when he was 81.  

Yesterday, we went to the cemetery to visit Rob's grandfather's grave.  It was a beautiful sunny day, the breeze making it cool.  We picked purple, pink, white and yellow wildflowers to put in the vase on his grave.  We laid out a blanket and gathered dandelion greens, grass and pinecones.  Rob got out his mandolin and played for about a half hour.  I gave grandma some cherry pie I made that morning.  Then, we talked...

 

Rob's grandma is 82 and living in a nursing home.  She has a picture of herself when she was young and grandpa on the shelf above her bed. I think the nursing home is a sad place, people lose their freedom, they depend on others, but sometimes we need that extra care and cannot do things ourselves any longer. 

My father will be 62 next month.  His father came to visit last month, he is 89 right now.  He seems to be in better health that his son.  We all went out for pizza together, they day after my birthday celebration together.  Dad's life is difficult because of  Parksinson's disease...he has lived such an active life, I remember swimming with him in Lake Dunmore in Vermont, him chopping wood, riding bikes with him to get doughnuts on a Saturday morning, lifting my daughter Hannah up to the ceiling and pretending she was on a roller coaster...

And now, he is forced by this disease to be much less active.  Stiff.  Uncomfortable.  Clumsy.  It's like a bad dream I've had when I'm laying in bed and can look with my eyes around, but cannot move any of my limbs, nor yell to ask anyone to help me move.

Having family and friends who love you, will spend time with you, help one another out...a true gift from God, that's what makes it worth wading through the sad times.  ♥

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