Tuesday, August 27

Fellin' Good - Oatmeal Raisin Cookies and Oat Milk

Some languages have really fabulous words describing very complex feelings or ideas that we just don't have in English. Ones that strike me are:

Forelsket: (Danish) The euphoric feeling felt while  falling in love.

Meraki: (Modern Greek) Describes doing something with all your heart, soul, and love  - often used to describe preparing food or decorating. 

Waldeinsamkeit: (German) A word to describe the feeling of being alone in the wilderness.

Hygge: (Danish) Hard to describe, but means something along the lines of  an “ absence of anything annoying or emotionally overwhelming, and the presence of  comforting and calming things”. I once heard it described as "the feeling of Christmas",  isn't that lovely?

And finally Mottainai: (Japanese) Can be used as a expression when something useful, often food, is wasted. Basically it translates to "what a waste!"  I recently heard that Japanese Grandmothers refer to wasted rice as "the tears of the farmer". Now that's a guilt trip.

The idea of mottainai was the driving force behind this post. I wanted to make something delicious, but I also wanted to show how easy it is to make things from what we might consider waste, or left overs. My attention first went to making almond milk and all the things that you can do with almond pulp. But after looking around a bit, I discovered that plenty of this was already out there. So then I began to think about other milks.

I have made my fair share of nuts milks before: almond, brazil, sesame, pecan, etc, etc. But last week’s post on oat yogurt got me thinking about oats. If I can make yogurt with oats, I guess I can make milk with oats, right? Right.

Oat milk is definitely a little more earthy tasting than, say, almond milk, but at the same time I would say that it has the creamy texture missing from most homemade milks. While I wouldn't recommend using it in your tea or coffee, it is fantastic in smoothies, on hot cereal, or for baking.

Oat Milk:

2 Cups oat groats (the whole oat kernel) soaked overnight
6 Cups filtered water
Sweetner and flavour if desired

After the oats have soaked, rinse them under running water to get off any of the starchy residue. In a blender, mix the oats with the water and puree for about a minute (I have a smallish blender, so I did this in two steps, each with 1 cup oats and 3 cups water).

Drain the pureed mixture through a sieve several times to get out the larger pieces of oats. If you have a nut milk bag, you can pass the mixture through that to remove the smaller pieces. If you want a sweetened milk, you can add the mixture back to the blender (give it a rinse first) with a couple of dates or honey and a tsp. of vanilla.

Refrigerate for up to 5 days.

With the left over oat pulp you can make these great little raw, sugar free, and gluten free cookies!

Remember, no Mottainai

Raw Oatmeal Raisin Cookies: (makes 16)

2 Cups of  the left over oat pulp (be sure to squeeze out the extra moisture)
1/2 Cup raisins
3/4 Cup date
1/2 Cup peeled and chopped apple
1/2 tsp Cinnamon
1/8 tsp nutmeg
Sea salt

Puree the mixture in a food processor until the raisins and date pieces start to become fairy small, but are still visible. Form the  dough into 16 equal balls, flattening them out a bit. Place cookies in a food dehydrator (if you don't have one you can put them on a parchment lined tray in your oven. Be sure that your oven is set to the absolute lowest it can go, and leave the door open ever so slightly). They should take anywhere from 9 to 12 hours to dehydrate but this depends a lot on your climate. Make sure that the top of the cookies are a bit crunchy, but that the bottoms have a chewy like consistency.

See this Oat Milk on Smoothie of the Week

xox Sophie

1 comment:

  1. Oat milk, how fantastic! This is extra fabulous, as compared to nuts or seeds, oats are fairly inexpensive as well as making delicious milk. I love that you included a recipe to use up the leftover pulp :D
    Thanks for linking up to Smoothie OTW, I hope you'll join us again soon!