Little Weekend Recap + Make Your Own Almond Butter!

Hi!! Happy Tuesday! 

Since I linked up  with Andrea and Erika yesterday for their "Favorite Things Party"...I wanted to wait until today to give a little recap of our weekend!

Friday evening ended with quite a bang...my daughter Cora Maye decided to act like an acrobat on the monkey bars and ended up falling, hitting her cheek on the side of the slide and having to go to the hospital to get 7 stitches!! My husband and her first went to our local hospital's ER and then they were sent downtown to the children's hospital so a pediatric plastic surgeon could be the one to do the stitches.  It was quite a night- but she was a champ and they only ended up being gone about 4 hours- which is SO not bad for an ER visit!  Needless to say, we took it easy the rest of the weekend! We had some friends over for dinner on Saturday night and went to church and the pool on Sunday. 

Here is our sweet girl after she got her stitches! My husband said she was so brave!! 

She got the SWEETEST handmade blanket and pillow- EVERY child that comes to the children's hospital ER gets one! My husband said it was so cute, because as soon as she was given the blanket, Cora asked for 2 more for her sisters!! HA! The lady giving her the blanket was like, "Ummm...how about some stickers for your sisters???" HA! 

Cora was good with that :) 

Another fun thing I did this past weekend was make my own almond butter! I am a peanut butter FANATIC- I would eat copious amounts of it if it wasn't extremely high in fat and calories :)  I have been doing a lot reading about almond butter being better for you in that it has more heart healthy mono-saturated fat, more fiber and more Vitamin E....BUT- it is SO much more expensive than peanut butter! Even still- I thought it would be fun to make some and see if I even liked it!  I looked up a bunch of recipes- but ended up just tossing 2 cups of oven roasted almonds in my Ninja blender- using the food processor attachment.

This is what the almonds looked like half way through the blending process!

I had to scrap down the sides of the food processor several times and it probably took about 8 minutes total to achieve the creamy consistency I was looking for.  I would definitely NOT recommend trying to make almond butter (or cashew butter or whatever) unless you have a high powered blender like a Blentec, Vitamix or Ninja.  

At the very end, I added 1/2 of a stevia packet- just because I wanted my almond butter to have a slight sweetness to it.  

And here is the final product!  It was DELICIOUS!! And SO DARN easy! I mean- all I did was blend up two cups of almonds!!  

So now here is the price breakdown: I bought my 12 oz bag of all natural almonds at Aldi for  $5.79.  Then I spent a good 20 minutes of my time making the almond butter (about 9 minutes making it) and then cleaning up the mess that making the almond butter made (another 10+ minutes).

Aldi sells a 12 oz container of organic almond butter for $5.99.  So for a $0.20 difference I can bypass the extra work and cleanup.

 You can find the almond butter at Aldi right by the peanut butter!

They are also carrying organic peanut butter now and have organic cashew butter!

I really liked the almond butter I made- but I didn't like the price.  While almond butter is healthy is some respects compared to peanut butter- I am not going to make the switch.  I am too cheap and I like my good ol' natural peanut butter! :) I am glad to know that it is super easy to make and even easier to buy for almost the identical price- if I want to start eating more of it!

Sooo..are you a peanut butter person?? Or have you jumped on the almond butter train??

Such riveting thoughts...HA!

Hope you have the best day! :)