![\"Leftover](\"http:\/\/cookhappylivehealthy.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/01\/Leftover-Almond-Meal-300x251.png\")
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Two weeks into my almond milk experiment<\/a> I came to an uncomfortable realization:\u00a0 Making my own nut milk was producing a lot of food waste!\u00a0 I want to tell you more about why this is a problem and how brownies and banana muffins came to my rescue (along with the recipes.)<\/p>\n But first I want to check in:\u00a0 Do you get where my almond milk story is headed?\u00a0 You understand it isn’t just a story about how to make nut milk, right?\u00a0 It’s about how to make our healthy eating goals, dreams and resolutions come true.\u00a0 My nut milk making is just an example of the process.<\/p>\n Checking In:\u00a0 Where’s This Nut Milk Thing Going?<\/strong><\/p>\n It all started in September, with my post about how autumn is a perfect time to “plant” the seeds of your resolutions<\/a>.\u00a0 That’s when I planted a resolution to make my own nut milk.<\/p>\n Now it’s January, when all the talk in practically every article and blog post is about resolutions.\u00a0 But before getting caught up in the New Year’s resolution frenzy, think back a minute.\u00a0 Have you been disappointed in the past when your resolutions somehow vanished by February?\u00a0 Wouldn’t you love to see those resolutions come true instead?<\/p>\n You don’t have to just hope good fortune smiles upon you!\u00a0 There are definite, practical, proactive steps you can take to make sure your resolutions really do happen.\u00a0 That’s what the last four blog posts were really about:\u00a0 How to get around the barriers you’ll likely run up against on the road to resolution success.\u00a0 Be sure to click back if you missed any.<\/p>\n Barrier #1:\u00a0 Effort<\/b><\/a>\u00a0 Change takes effort.\u00a0 It’s exciting to sit down and write resolutions, e.g., about eating more vegetables, less sugar or better fats.\u00a0 But then comes the next week and you didn’t get to the store and don’t have any vegetables to cook for dinner, or there’s chocolate cake at the office for someone’s birthday, or you didn’t take time to figure out what “better fats” look like.\u00a0 It is at those critical points when resolutions can easily begin fading.<\/p>\n The Solution:\u00a0 Rock solid commitment\u00a0<\/em> Have you really thought through why a resolution is important to you–so important that it’s worth the effort it takes to change–e.g., to shop for veggies on Sunday afternoon when you’d rather put your feet up?\u00a0 Even if you’re only ready to experiment rather than make a change for life, that’s ok, but\u00a0 “Get your head behind your actions.”<\/p>\n Barrier #2:\u00a0 Frustration<\/b><\/a>\u00a0 Change also takes doing things in new ways.\u00a0 To eat more healthfully, for example, you’ll need to buy and use new, healthier ingredients, buy and prep new vegetables; pack your own lunch instead of just dropping by a fast food restaurant; try new recipes that require different pans and tools.\u00a0 What if you don’t have any of these foods, routines and equipment?\u00a0 Frustration!<\/p>\n The Solution:\u00a0 Inevitability Planning<\/em>\u00a0 Plan to make your success inevitable.\u00a0 In other words, set yourself up so the outcome can’t be anything other than success.\u00a0 For example, set up your kitchen, get the foods, have the recipes and buy the lunch containers and vegetable peelers so that you can’t help but make the healthy meals you so want.<\/p>\n Barrier #3:\u00a0 Tedium<\/b><\/a>\u00a0 The first leg of a journey is always exciting.\u00a0 It’s new and fresh.\u00a0 But then comes a trickier part of the path.\u00a0 While the newness of your resolution has worn off, it hasn’t yet become a habit that you do easily and without thinking.\u00a0 Instead, it still takes some work.\u00a0 It’s tedious.<\/p>\n The Solution:\u00a0 Commitment and Time<\/em>\u00a0 This is when your rock solid commitment comes to the rescue again.\u00a0 Dig deep and reconnect with it.\u00a0 If you didn’t write it down along with your resolutions, doing so now will reinforce it.<\/p>\n Next, gift yourself a little time to think about ways to streamline your new and healthier meal making ways.\u00a0 At first, when you don’t know what you’re doing, healthy meal making can be clunky and time-consuming.\u00a0 But give your brains some space to wander and it will come up with ways to smooth out the bumps.<\/p>\n Barrier #4:\u00a0 Taste<\/b><\/a> Deep down, are you worried that after putting out a lot of effort and commitment to make healthier food, you won’t even like it?<\/p>\n The Solution:\u00a0 Time and Practice\u00a0<\/em> Let’s be honest, there’s a good chance your healthier meals won’t rank up there with pizza, mac ‘n cheese, Fettuccini Alfredo and whatever other high-calorie, low-nutrition foods you love right now.\u00a0 But our tastes buds aren’t stone fixtures.\u00a0 They are flexible, adaptable and can absolutely change and grow to like–and even prefer–the light, refreshing, nurturing flavor of wholesome, real foods.\u00a0 You just have to give them time to adjust.<\/p>\n So the “moral” of my almond milk story is that resolutions don’t just happen; they take effort, commitment, thought, preparation and time. Have you put these pieces into place by now, the third week of January, so your resolutions don’t disappear by February?\u00a0 If you don’t know how to set yourself up so resolution success is inevitable, please don’t let another day go by before you check out my Cook Happy | Live Healthy online course<\/a>.\u00a0 Three classes, three hours each and you will have the basic tools and insights to make your resolutions come true.<\/p>\n There’s a mysterious side of nut milk making.\u00a0 You start out with 1 quart water and 1 cup almonds.\u00a0 You end up with 1 quart of almond milk–and 1 cup of almond meal!\u00a0 In other words, making almond milk doesn’t really use up the almonds.\u00a0 You just turn them into a meal that’s like rough-ground flour.<\/p>\n It’s kind of the dark side of almond milk.\u00a0 Making it extracts something<\/i> from the almonds to make the milk, but it leaves 99% of the almonds behind!\u00a0 Do most people just toss the left-behind meal?\u00a0 I couldn\u2019t bring myself to do that.\u00a0 One, almonds are expensive.\u00a0 Two, I am committed to avoiding food waste for moral as well as environmental reasons (here’s one of my previous posts on food waste<\/a>.)<\/p>\n One of our readers must have run into the same problem as she asked about this a couple posts ago.\u00a0 So here are a couple ideas I’ve come up with.<\/p>\n Grain Add-In<\/em>\u00a0 Almond meal makes a flavorful and nutritious addition to cooked grains like rice, buckwheat and oatmeal.\u00a0 Prior to cooking the grain, stir in 2-4 Tablespoons per 1-2 cups of grain.<\/p>\n Tasty Waste Not-Want Not Strategies + Where Is This Story Going? Two weeks into my almond milk experiment I came to an uncomfortable realization:\u00a0 Making my own nut milk was producing a lot of food waste!\u00a0 I want to tell you more about why this is a problem and how brownies and banana muffins came … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"generate_page_header":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[20,1,28],"tags":[675,670,671,676],"class_list":["post-2453","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-recipes","category-uncategorized","category-waste-not-want-not","tag-healthy-desserts","tag-how-to-make-almond-milk","tag-how-to-use-almond-meal","tag-paleo-desserts","masonry-post","generate-columns","tablet-grid-50","mobile-grid-100","grid-parent","grid-50"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cookhappylivehealthy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2453","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cookhappylivehealthy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cookhappylivehealthy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cookhappylivehealthy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cookhappylivehealthy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2453"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/cookhappylivehealthy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2453\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2461,"href":"https:\/\/cookhappylivehealthy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2453\/revisions\/2461"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cookhappylivehealthy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2453"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cookhappylivehealthy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2453"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cookhappylivehealthy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2453"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Now for Brownies and Banana Muffins!<\/h3>\n
![\"IMG_1882\"](\"http:\/\/cookhappylivehealthy.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/01\/IMG_1882-300x263.jpg\")
Banana Bread or Muffins (Applesauce Option, Gluten Free, Almost Paleo)<\/em>\u00a0 This recipe was inspired by Kelly Schmidt\u2019s recipe for Almond Butter Banana Muffins<\/a>.\u00a0 I ran across it right after my second batch of almond milk had produced yet another unexpected wealth of almond meal.\u00a0 Kelly is a Registered Dietician and food coach<\/a> specializing in Paleo and Primal Eating, and has been living with Type 1 diabetes for many years.\u00a0 She is quick to say that real food is the key to health.\u00a0 Her real food muffin recipe calls for almond butter but she encouraged me to substitute almond meal and indeed, it worked just fine.\u00a0 The (non-Paleo) addition of flour was also mine.\u00a0 For the recipe. . .<\/a><\/p>\n![\"ChocAlmondBrownies--GF](\"http:\/\/cookhappylivehealthy.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/01\/ChocAlmondBrownies-GF-1-300x300.jpg\")
Healthy Chocolate Almond Brownies (Gluten Free)\u00a0<\/em> Meghan Telpner\u2019s Butternut Squash Ooo-eee Goo-eee Brownie<\/a> recipe was the inspiration for this almond meal creation.\u00a0 Meghan is a nutritionist<\/a> who was diagnosed with Crohn\u2019s Disease, a supposedly incurable disease that she cured in a month!\u00a0 She has gone on to create a small empire around healthy eating, but still finds time to share recipes, like this one that was a desperate last ditch effort to use up the butternut squash in her pantry.\u00a0 My almond meal substituted well for most of the rice flour called for\u2013and I was able to reduce the sugar by using stevia and a bit less cocoa.\u00a0 In case you think \u201cHealthy\u201d ruins the appeal of \u201cBrownies,\u201d withhold judgment until you\u2019ve tried this recipe<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"