Tag Archives: milk

alternative-health

Alternatives to Milk You Can Make Yourself

Leave a comment
English: Glass of soy milk and soy beans.
Soymilk with soybeans. Image via Wikipedia

My sister has an outright milk allergy but I can tolerate it so long as I  don’t go crazy on the fresh ricotta. That means I’m not without some sensitivity to milk, and pretty much only use it for coffee.  So we have always had some milk alternatives in our house.  In fact now you can find all kinds of milk alternatives in the refrigerator aisle, from soy to coconut milk.  But the prices are high and I was pleased to see that you can make milk substitutes from soy to chickpea to oat milk.  If you are allergic, vegan, frugal, keep kosher or just like the taste of different milks, here are some recipes.  Note that these may lack the nutritional qualities of dairy milk and that the freshness of the beans or nuts will affect the flavor.  Use these in baking if you don’t like the flavor.  You can adjust saltiness, sweetness or add vanilla or other flavor if desired.  And you can dilute milks that seem too thick with water.  Best yet, you usually have some residue that can be used in soups and sauces.

 Oatmeal Milk

This is perhaps the easiest milk to make since it requires no cooking.  Take one cup of oatmeal and put into a blender. Add a quart of filtered water, cap and blend for a minute.  Strain through a fine sieve.  Season as you wish (vanilla is nice) and serve or use for baking.

Herbalist’s gloss: I always have oatstraw (the green stalks and immature seeds) in the house for overnight infusions which are rich in minerals and help my nerves.  So I will bring a cup of oatstraw in a quart of water to a boil, simmer for 20 minutes and strain out.  Top up to a quart and use in place of plain water for a more nutritious oat milk.

Garbanzo Bean (Chickpea) Milk

This can be used for chickpeas, soybeans, chana dahl, or other white beans.  Because beans contain antinutrients that can inhibit the thyroid, they require cooking.

Close-up picture of white and green chick peas.
Chick peas- white ones are better for milk. Image via Wikipedia

Soak 2-3 cups of beans in water overnight, in a large container with enough water to expand the volume by 2-3 times.  If you are using a whole bean you can start two days earlier and let the beans start to sprout by draining and rinsing several times a day, but this is not necessary.  At least make sure the beans are soft enough bite.  Place in a blender and grind into a paste, adding water as needed to make sure there are no chunks left.

Half fill a large pot with water and bring to a boil.  The bean milk will tend  to boil over so leave room.  (If it does, it is pretty easy to clean up.)  Add the bean paste, stir well, let simmer just below boiling for 20 minutes, stirring occasionally.  Let cool and strain through a fine mesh strainer or squeeze through cheesecloth.  Chickpea milk is thicker than soy milk, so depending on your bean, you may need to adjust the cloth and squeeze or put a weight on top (say a plastic container full of water.)  You can save the bean residue for falafel or hamburger filler.

Bean texture is an individual thing so I often dilute this down by as much as a third, adding a couple teaspoons of Himalayan salt and sugar or herbal substitute for this quantity.  Use your taste as a guide, going slowly.

Fructus Momordicae, a kind of Chinese herb for...
Lo han guo fruit sweetens without calories. Image via Wikipedia

Herbalist’s gloss:  Before blending I crush half of a lo han guo fruit into the blender.  This adds a  non caloric sweet taste (but it also sweetens the residue.)  Lo han guo, Siraitia (formerly Mormordica) grosvenorii, is sold in Chinese herb shops or grocery stores. I find that using stevia causes easy over-sweetening and I’m less fond of the taste,

Almond  Milk

This recipe can also be used for cashews, Brazil nuts, hazelnuts and other kinds of tree nuts. Note that California almonds are no longer really raw even if labeled as such, but they work anyway. You can also use the white meat from coconuts. It is more expensive than the bean or oat milks but has important fats and minerals.  Fresh nuts are key as fats can get rancid tastes as they age.

Soak 2 cups raw nuts overnight in plenty of water.  Drain and add a quart of water.  Blend in the blender until milky- if you don’t have a Vitamix or other high power blender, do it in batches then pour back into the blender.  Add a little cinnamon, nutmeg and sweetener if desired.  Blend again and strain out, wringing through cheesecloth or a cotton towel.  The nut residue works well in baking or in a smoothie. This makes a richer milk than the bean or oat milks.

Herbalist’s gloss: I like to mix a handful of cashews into the almonds, and use cinnamon and nutmeg.  Honey adds an eggnog flavor.

Your home made milks will last 3-5 days in the refrigerator and probably won’t freeze well, but they can be used in baking when slightly past prime.  Since you make them yourself, you can control the amount of water for thickness or taste, as well as added salt, sweetener or spices.  Experiment in how you use them, introduce new flavors gradually and don’t be afraid to mix.  While I think that chickpea milk tastes like soymilk, and I like different flavors in cereal, hot chocolate or baking, I am not happy with any substitute in coffee.

English: Shelled almonds (Prunus dulcis) Itali...

As for protein, vegetable sources need to be mixed for complete proteins.  I am of the school that says they should be mixed at the same meal.   So chickpea milk with oat or rice milk, any milk served with a meal including animal protein like eggs or fish will balance out the constellation of amino acids so you can use the vegetable proteins.

Calcium can come from non-dairy greens, especially when served with fat to enhance digestion.  Or put crushed organic egg shells and organic bone in apple cider vinegar, and take a tablespoonful in water before dinner.

Related articles
15 people like this post.

Unlike
Share
alternative-health, fertility

Full Fat Dairy Helps Ovulation in the Infertile

1 Comment

Women who eat at least one portion of high-fat dairy food per day have more productive ovulation, by 27% than women who eat low-fat dairy. Women who eat 2 servings or more of low fat dairy have 85% more ovulation-related infertility.  Is it the dairy, the fat, or a combination?

‎”The risk of anovulatory infertility was found to be 27 percent lower in women who ate at least one portion of high-fat dairy food per day compared with women who had one high-fat serving of dairy per week, or even less. Women who ate two or more portions of lowfat dairy foods a day increased their risk of ovulation related infertility by 85 percent.”      Human Reproduction 2007;doi:10.1093/humrep/dem019.

Butter, A Source of CLA
Butter, A Source of CLA

We live in a world where low fat is treated as the holy grail of health, yet we forget that fats and fats alone contain certain essential nutrients, including those used to form hormones used in reproduction.  The fat from pasture-raised cows contain  has as much as five times the CLA (a fatty acid which is a potent anti-cancer agent, muscle builder, and immunity booster) as fat from grain-fed cows.  The Omega 3 essential fatty acids are found in similar proportions to deep sea fish.  Grass-fed milk contains rumenic acid (a CLA), DHA, vaccenic acid, branched chain fatty acids, butyric acid, lecithin, cysteine-rich whey proteins, calcium, iodine and vitamin D all of which have value from reducing cancer to increasing fertility.

Butterfat contains glycospingolipids, a special category of fatty acids that protect against gastro-intestinal infection, which would be protective during pregnancy.  Raw butter is the only source of an anti-stiffness factor which prevents hardening of the arteries, cataracts, and calcification of the pineal gland- and which may prevent stiffness and adhesions of the fallopian tubes.

There is a case to be made that one should not take milk, and by milk I mean organic grass-fed milk, unless it comes with all of its fat. The balance of the drink is quite different, and there are constituents that mimic insulin and can stimulate insulin-resistance about which I have written before.  Insulin resistance may affect the ability of sperm to penetrate the egg more than anovulatory infertility. Butterfat in the milk will slow insulin spikes, since we know that having some fat in the meal will lower an insulin curve after eating. The second statistic about two servings or more of nonfat dairy causing 85% more anovulatory infertility may indicate that there is an additional mechanism.

But is it the lack of milk fat or the lack of fat altogether that causes a reduction in ovulation?  The study was not clear.  Women who tend to drink low fat milk also tend to reduce fat overall in their diets.  And I see women all the time who are thin, cold and infertile who have very little fat in their bodies or in their diets, usually of non-animal origin. Fat is needed for reproduction.

Among hunter-gatherers, fat is the preferred part of meat.  Inuit hunters will frequently eat the vitamin-rich fatty organs and fat, giving the muscle meat to their dogs.  Fat is what forms your brain, your hormones and allows your cell membranes to function.  And animal fat like the important Omega 3s, DHA and EPA, are not easily converted from plant-based forms- in fact a significant portion of people lack the genetic mechanism to convert plant fats to these essential animal fats, which is why flaxseed oil is not a good substitute for fish oil.

DHA Molecule
Image via Wikipedia

I think that fats, particularly animal fats, are an important factor in fertility.  Fat is the substance of  the phospholipid bilayer that surrounds cells, including eggs, and lets nutrients and sperm through the membrane.  Fat in the form of cholesterol makes up the building blocks of hormones needed to trigger ovulation and implantation.   Young women who have very low fat in their diets and very little body fat frequently lose their menstrual periods and suffer bone loss due to lack of estrogens.  This of course leads to fertility problems.