Tuesday, January 22, 2013

Milk - non dairy of course!

Have I still not posted about "milk"?
As you may know, I am dairy intolerant and also allergic to nuts... the only seeds I eat are chia, linseed and pumpkin (or any other squash or melon seeds). So I was quite excited when Micki Rose of Truly Gluten Free pointed me in the direction of her article in Foods Matter about making your own dairy free milk. She said she had never tried it with pumpkin seeds, but why not?!
So I gave it a go a couple of months ago - and now make it quite regularly.
I was never a fan of milk, always liked the idea of it but hated the taste - probably because my body knew it was bad for me! But it comes in handy for anything resembling cereal, at breakfast and also for making curry sauces or soups creamier and the like. I have not tried to cook fish in it - not so sure how that would be but I'll get back to you on that!


So what I do is simply soak a bowlful of pumpkin seeds for at least 24 hours. Change the water once in that time if possible. I then drain them and rinse well (the aim of this soaking and rinsing is to render the seeds more easily digestible by getting rid of 'enzyme inhibitors and phytic acid'.). The seeds then go into a blender. I do a ratio of about 1 cup of seeds to 2 cups of fresh water. With pumpkin seeds, any more water makes the milk too watery for me. Blend! I blend it well so as much milky goodness as possible is released.
Then the milk needs to go through a seive/ muslin to separate the seed mulsh from the "milk" liquid. 

DON'T THROW THE SEED 'MULSH' AWAY!!! See THIS RECIPE!!

The resulting milk is refreshing and full of goodness. As I said, it is a help in cooking and an alternative to fruit juice on cereal, for anyone avoiding too much fructose. It does not taste like dairy milk - it tastes like... well, pumpkin seeds to be honest! But I like them so that's fine by me :)





Don't forget, you can flavour your milk exactly as you wish to! See the article by Micki for more ideas of what to make fake milk out of and inspiration on what to add to it. 

Happy milking!

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feel free to comment/ add your own suggestions or even recipes (with links if you like - let's network darlings! ;D )