These days, with the craziness of COVID, ordinary dairy products, such as milk, get cleared out of the shelves by panicking civilians. Which is kind of a waste, seeing how the milk will just go bad before you get the chance to drink all of it.
In the olden days, folks might eat boiled leather, mice, and grass in order to survive when the food was gone. With all the milk missing from the shelves, people look to alternatives, such as soy, rice, almond, or coconut milk. Alternatives that normally only we - the allergy community - would use. We have no alternative when these things we depend on go missing.
But wait, maybe there is an alternative! A dairy free and nut free one.
To help you all continue to have milk in your cereal, we turn to the horse for inspiration. In doing so, we find the horse's food. Oats. You might not have milk in your fridge, but you probably have oats. But not in your fridge. We use gluten-free oats as someone in my house has a wheat allergy.
I found a good oat milk recipe recently on the minimalist-baker.com website, and I made it to test it out. It's actually pretty simple. I would add that I think pre-processing the date(s) in a food processor into a paste would blend them better into the milk recipe.
DESPERATION OAT MILK
1 cup of gluten-free rolled oats (not steel cut)
4 cups of water
1 pitted date* (or 2)
1 capful of vanilla flavoring
1 pinch of sea salt
A blender
Throw everything in the blender, cover and blend for 30 seconds to 1 minute. Strain twice through a clean t-shirt or kitchen towel. Store in refrigerator for up to 5 days. Simply stir or shake to blend if separated.
NOTE: Blending longer increases the unpleasant slime factor. Also, do not use a nut milk bag or mesh strainer as they both allow too much solid material to pass through.
In the recipe, there were various tips about how to avoid slimy oat milk: no pre-soaking, no over blending, no hot water. You know how porridge (the good kind) can get nice and creamy? Well, in oat milk, that creaminess gets translated into an unpleasant slime. Who wants to drink slime? I actually tried a drink
after 1 straining run, and there was still too much grit for my taste. After the 2nd strain, it was better. I probably wouldn't drink a straight up cup of it, but it'll work for most applications I think. I would probably also add 1 more date.*