San Jose Municipal Rose Garden

Free things to do are probably one of the best things in life. For my grandma's birthday, I took her to the San Jose Municipal Rose Garden and fell in love with some of the roses with unique colors.

Trying my hand at photoshop...
The roses were originally purple!

I think roses need to be at least two colors to be considered legitimate.

Polka dot roses?! So beautiful

I love my grandma! (:

I think it's definitely worth checking out, although it's not like you can spend hours of your day here, you can still be amazed by how many different kinds of roses there are and enjoy the sunshine.

Homemade Almond Milk

After reading the article "Lay Off the Almond Milk, You Ignorant Hipsters" by Tom Philpott (See the article here), I realized that I was also drawn to these supposed magical properties of almond milk, shelling out a good amount of money for a jug. I am partly lactose intolerant (being Asian...it's probably more unlikely that you're NOT lactose intolerant), so when my friend introduced me to almond milk, I was literally overjoyed to see its high calcium and low fat content.

I guess the main takeaway I got from the article is that I was paying too much for literally just crushed almonds and water (with some chemicals). So, I decided to try my hand at making almond milk myself.

soaked almonds

The milk is ready!

almond milk and some almond meal on the side (after straining)

Ingredients

1 cup almonds

5 cups water (1 for soaking, the rest for the milk)

I let to almonds soak for about 12 hours (but in other recipes, I saw that only about 4 hours is needed). I put the almonds into a soy milk maker (an oddly specific device, I know) and let her rip with additional water. It was all ready in about 15 minutes! I then poured the milk through a strainer which separated the milk from the crushed almond meal. The result is a slightly cleaner tasting version of almond milk (which my family finished within a day!).

There aren't any stabilizers in this homemade version, so the almond milk tends to separate really easily. I'm not completely sure what I want to do with the almond meal yet, but I'll probably find some recipes online.

Another takeaway from the article was the water wasting properties of producing almonds. Although it's good for me to be aware of its ecological harms, I don't think it's effective for me to give up almonds or something in protest. With these things, it's better for some government intervention to help curb California's forever impending drought.

I've become really interested in making super basic ingredients/foods at home! My friend really inspired me the other day by making homemade butter, which I have yet to try. The idea of being able to control all parts of the process appeals to me greatly. Off to obtaining some heavy cream!

The Little Things; July Roses

I've been going on runs every other day, and as I pass through the neighborhood, I'm sometimes able to catch a glimpse of my favorite kinds of roses: pink on the outside, with an orangy-peach center. I know that red roses stand for love, yellow for friendship, but how about these? 

About to head off on my run again, hope you have a great day!