We Made: Almond Butter

This isn’t going to be a very long post, because, as it turns out, making your own nut butter is a fairly simple process. At least, it seemed like it to me. I can’t be completely sure about that, because Andrew did all the work on this one. He’s amazing.

I should preface this by saying that Andrew and I asked for a fancy blender from my parents for this Christmas — the two of us do actually like eating healthy, and it’s so much easier to stuff all your fruits and leafy greens in a yummy, drinkable smoothie than to actually remember to incorporate them with our dinner. We’re usually so excited to be eating whatever it is we’ve decided to make, that we forget about everything else entirely.

Anyway, when we opened the box for our Bullet blender, there were two blades. One looked like a normal smoothie blade, and one was way too flat to be good for any sort of blending. Reading the instructions we found that it was a “milling blade,” and Googling for what we could use it for, we saw that people were using it to make their own almond butter and what-not.

So, why not?

Andrew was super excited about trying it out, and I was pretty excited and interested to see if it worked. We bought 3 lbs of almonds from Costco, (Oh, Costco. How we love you.) and Sunday afternoon, Andrew went to work.

Apparently, all you need to do to make almond butter is mill it a bunch. He stuck the almonds in with the milling blade, pulsed it until all the almonds were in little pieces, and then just let it go for a few minutes.

Voila! Organic, homemade, delicious almond butter. I have the sinking feeling that we’re very quickly going to turn into people who make a lot of homemade things now. Obviously, we love convenience, but making food is just too much fun not to do it every once in a while if we can. I’m excited. It’s a whole new life we’re living over here.

Food We Like: Chilaquiles

We always joke about how we only ever make two kinds of food: Italian and Mexican. Andrew learned how to cook from his Italian grandma, and I may be as white as they come, but I grew up in Southern California and my family has a serious love for tacos, enchiladas, burritos, etc. So of course, one of my favorite breakfast foods is chilaquiles.

It doesn’t look the most appetizing, but I swear it’s delicious

I don’t know what it is about having tortilla chips smothered in enchilada sauce in the morning, but it just starts my day off right. Andrew’s been intrigued by my love for this food (I order it whenever we go to brunch and it’s an option), so we tried our hand at making our own and it’s become a weekend breakfast staple.

Ingredients:

• Stale tortilla chips OR stale corn tortillas that have been fried in some vegetable oil* (see tips for details)
• Green chili enchilada sauce (it can also be made with red, but we prefer green)
• Black beans
• Fried eggs
• Cheese — most recipes call for white, but we use colby jack more often than not
• Sour cream
• Whatever else you feel like adding, this isn’t a fancy frou-frou dish

Directions:

• Depending on what you use for tortillas, step 1 is either cutting up your tortillas into manageable pieces and frying them in oil OR putting your tortilla chips in a pan, pouring in green chili sauce and cooking them over medium heat while mixing them around the sauce. Add the beans shortly after and continue mixing them around. Do this until it’s warmed through and everything is fully coated.

• Step 2: While you’re doing this, crack a couple of eggs into a pan and fry them.

• Step 3: Turn off the heat and add the eggs, once they’re done cooking.

• Step 4: Put the grated cheese on the mixture. Let it melt just a little bit, and then dish it out however you wish. (Since it’s just me and Andrew, we put it in a big bowl and go family style.)

This one’s for Andrew.

• Step 5: Add spices or whatever you want. We just add in some sour cream.

*TIPS FOR TORTILLAS/TORTILLA CHIPS*

This thing is pretty heavy and coated in lots of sauce, so you’ll want tortilla chips that won’t disintegrate easily. That means no thin Tostitos or anything like that. Get some nice, thick chips with some weight.