Healthy Snack Part 1

Yesterday, I talked about healthy eating and mentioned I like to have celery with homemade almond butter.  If you don’t like celery, it’s also good with apple slices.  Sometimes, I will eat it by itself; especially the newest version I made.  The beautiful thing about homemade almond butter is that it’s so easy even I can do it!  And it’s way cheaper than buying it in the grocery or at the co-op.  Plus there is no added sugar and you know everything that is going into it.  Not everyone likes almond butter, though.  I will admit it was an acquired taste for this peanut butter junkie.  And though I haven’t tried it yet, you can probably make homemade peanut butter the same way.  Here’s the catch…I don’t really measure any ingredients as I make it.  I start with a little and then add until it’s the flavor I like.  Here’s the original almond butter recipe I made:

1 pound (roughly) roasted almonds - (you can use unroasted but I like the flavor better of roasted). 

That’s it.  Those are all of the ingredients.  Here’s how you make it.

                Place almonds in food processor, cover and start processor.  It will be noisy as heck at first but will get quieter.  Keep it on until the almond butter is the consistency you like.  It typically takes less than 5 minutes for my almond butter to get to the right consistency. 

Simple as heck, right?  I KNOW!!  Now, if you want to get wild and crazy, you can add cinnamon during the blending process.  You can probably add other spices too, I just have only ever added cinnamon.  That is until last weekend.  I decided to get a bit crazy and make chocolate almond butter.  Here’s how that adventure went.

I started with the almonds in the food processor as I normally do.  Then when I went to the cupboard for the cinnamon, I saw the cocoa powder there and decided to give that a try.  So I added about half the bag.  It was a small bag so it was maybe 2 tablespoons, if that.  I let that mix for a while then I tried it.  Good heavens was that terrible.  Have I mentioned I’m not the best cook?  Then I see the cocoa flakes in my cupboard.  Sure, why not?  It can’t make it any worse, can it?  The answer to that is no but it doesn’t make it any better.  So then I added some cinnamon.  Hmmm…not much better.  It needs to be sweeter.  Oh yeah!  Splenda!!  So I opened several packets of Splenda.  I really wish I had counted how many so I could share it with you but I didn’t.  I thought about it.  But that’s as far as that got.  Once I added the Splenda and let is mix for a minute, it actually was pretty tasty! 

So there you go.  That’s your recipe(s) as well as what NOT to do for homemade almond butter.  Happy Sunday!

BE BOLD! BE YOU!