……………………….

These past few weeks, I’ve been excited about the new food processor my mom gave me for an early birthday present. I used to make Jeff homemade almond butter regularly and he loved it. So I decided it was time to make him some again. We buy almond butter from the store occasionally, but it’s spendy and not as easy to digest as when we make it ourselves with sprouted nuts. I’ve written about why we soak and sprout our nuts and seeds in this post and why it’s so much easier to digest them that way. We bought some raw almonds, soaked them in warm water with salt for 24 hours, then dried them on a low temperature in the oven (our food dehydrator is broken.) Then we put them in the food processor to make nut butter. It turned into a fluffy almond “meal” that would be perfect for baking. I wondered if I let the food processor run longer would it turn it into “butter”? Or would I need to add some coconut oil to make it creamy? Well, we had a bunch of ripe peaches and Jeff wanted to add some. He peeled the peaches, cut them up, and added them to the almond meal. Then we spread the mixture thinly on a baking pan and cooked it on a low temperature. 

Cut up into bars they made the most delicious treats! Yum!  

(I *might* have eaten too many at one point and gotten a stomach ache. Good in small doses.)

…………………………………..

 Bracken came over while I was taking pictures. 

 (little fingers stained with berries)

 He thought the plate could use a little rearranging. 

………………………………..

Then Jeff took the rest of the almonds and made a surprise for all of us. He ground them up in the food processor and added some coconut oil which made it all creamy. (Plus coconut oil has so many health benefits, we’ll leave that for another post.) He added just a little raw honey and some home-dried fruit (figs, peaches, and strawberries.) All of us could not believe how incredibly good it was. We brought it along to market last weekend and spread it on apple slices. What a treat it was. We had kept it in the fridge, which made the consistency firmer with the coconut oil in it. Sitting out at room temperature made it softer. Our bodies like our homemade nut butters much better. The jar disappeared way too quickly. There will be more nut-butter-making in our future!

……………………

 Bracken spooning some out.

………………………………….

We’ve made raw fermented pickles before. We love them. They’re one of Bracken’s favorite foods, hands down. This year we bought 35 lbs of cucumbers from a local farm to make a big batch of them. We used different guidelines than we normally do for how much salt to use. We scratched our heads, but thought “well, that’s what it says…” We had them fermenting in our giant crock. Jeff checked them. Oh no! Not enough salt! Bummer! It can be heartbreaking to see that much work filling up the compost pile instead of the fridge. Oh well, that’s how kitchen experiments go sometimes, isn’t it? We’ll make some more.

……………………………..

.

.