Almond Butter

Betsy and I are planning to attend the Disabled American Veterans Winter Sports Clinic again this year. Last year was the first time I went, and it was awesome!! The DAV is kind enough to pay for the first visit, but the veteran has to cover travel to Snowmass and lodging every other time. Lift tickets and my meals are still free, though we have to pay for Betsy' and Grace's skiing and meals. Even with the things the DAV pays for, the cost for 3 tickets from Knoxville to Aspen, seven nights at the resort hotel (admittedly at a very reduced cost), ski school for Grace, lift tickets for Betsy, meals and incidentals gets pretty expensive.

So, a few months ago, I wrote a letter to Blendtec asking if they would sponsor me for the next clinic. A very nice representative wrote back explaining that they don't have a budget for sponsorships, however she enjoyed reading my blog and sent me two new containers for my blender, a Wildside jar and a Twister jar.

Still got that "New Jar" smell

Although it looks smaller in the picture, the Wildside jar is about twice as big as the standard pitcher the Blendtec comes with. It is MUCH better for the larger blends I eat when I go out. I don't even use the original pitcher anymore. 

AAAAHHHHH!!!!!! There's a head in my Wildside jar!!!!!!!

The Twister jar is much smaller, about half the size of the original. Like any male, I failed to read the directions about the Twister jar and assumed it was for making smaller versions of my typical blends; sort of like a travel pitcher. So, I put my regular lunch blend in there, added water, and pushed the soup/syrup/fondue button, thinking it would mix up my meal like always. What I didn't know--and what I easily could've found out had I read the instructions--was that the Twister jar is more for making blends with a heavier consistency. This includes things like dips, or thick shakes, or pizza dough. The blade in the Twister is looser than the blades in the original or Wildside jars. This enables it to spin at a faster rate than it would normally, so it can cut through thicker blends. So, when it's confronted with a "normal" blend like my typical lunch, the blades have such a high RPM that they quickly overheat. And this is what happened to me. The Blendtec's typical loud roar became a high pitched whine and after about 10 seconds it shut itself off. Being the idiot I am, I tried it a couple more times with the same result. And that's when I finally looked at the directions and this handy booklet of recipes:

Couldn't come up with a witty caption for this picture. It's a recipe booklet, ok?

The other day, I decided to put the Twister jar to the test with Blendtec's almond butter recipe. I frequently eat almond butter in my blends, but it is ridiculously expensive at the store. However, you can buy large bags of raw almonds at Costco for pretty cheap. So, ideally, I can fill my own mason jars or tupperware with homemade almond butter and never have to pay for the stuff again.

Where's the gram of sugar come from? Do almonds naturally have sugar?

For this project, I enlisted the assistance of my daughter, Grace. She usually likes to "help" me when I cook. I put "help" in quotes because she's six and I love my daughter more than anything but she's pretty useless in the kitchen. Grace "helps" me by giving me the opportunity to clean the kitchen because 

"Daddy, I'll crack that egg....oops...sorry Daddy..."

"Let me stir, Daddy!  Whoops...sorry Daddy..."

"I want to pour the milk, Daddy!!  Uh oh...sorry Daddy..."

So then I say, "Betsy, I can only use one arm, so can you clean this??"

Anyway, here she is, along with the recipe, the ingredients for the almond butter (1.5 cups of almonds), my three pitchers (Twister jar is on the left), and the blender base:

There's a white hairy monster in this picture!!!!

This is an operation that takes two hands. One hand needs to change the blender speed to seven then stop the blender after 40 seconds. The other hand continuously turns the Twister lid in order to make sure every almond is thoroughly creamed. So, I had my trusty assistant speed up the blender to seven while I held the lid. 

Unfortunately, Grace got no higher than two because I wasn't holding the lid down tight enough and almond dust sprayed everywhere. My highly dependable helper screamed in terror and ran out of the room, leaving me holding the lid, looking around, wondering if maybe the dog could increase the speed or turn the bloody thing off for me (excuse the language; I've been watching a lot of British television). Finally, after 2 minutes of trying unsuccessfully to raise the speed with my nose and faithfully rotating the Twister lid at a whopping speed of 2 while my cowardly child peered anxiously around the corner, the blender overheated and shut itself off. 

The picture doesn't show the chaos happening in the kitchen right now

Since I was using raw almonds, rather than dry roasted, I needed to run the blender at Speed 7 "until smooth and creamy." So, I dragged Grace back in the room and our second attempt at getting up to 7 went much more smoothly. Altogether, we probably ran the blender about 4 minutes before I felt like the almond butter was the right consistency. 

The chaos in the kitchen is similar to what's happening in the Twister jar

I do need to specify that I did not try tasting this almond butter because I can't eat, but it looked similar enough to the stuff I buy at the store. Grace has an allergy to tree nuts (or maybe she really doesn't like them; we haven't had her tested), so she didn't try it either. If you have a Blendtec and Twister jar, you'll have to try this sometime and let me know how it is!

Can you tell she's been getting rich from the tooth fairy?

Thanks again for the equipment, Blendtec!!