I’m so pleased with myself today because I made soy milk for breakfast. It’s my first attempt at it; my go at it also marks the start of my delicious journey with the blender I bought last night.

I love soy milk – it’s the Chinese in me – and there’s nothing like fresh soy milk made without preservatives. I had to soak the beans overnight – you will see that they expand to about twice their original size and turn into a deeper shed of yellow (small picture on right of the blender). In the morning I boiled the soaked beans for about 15 minutes. After which the boiled beans were placed in the blender together with an equal portion of water. Then I hit the power button and let the blades do their work.

I then put the resulting mixture through a sieve which had a very fine wire mesh and used a spoon to press down on the pulp to extract the milk. A muslin or cheese cloth would probably be better but I still managed to get most of the milk out with my sieve. The remaining pulp (bottom right picture) is also known as okara, a type of soy fibre. Okara can also be used in cooking and making desserts, and I’m thinking up ways I can use my little stash.

As the milk had been squeezed into a pot I warmed it up and added a little brown sugar to sweeten it. And voila, I had a richly flavoured and nutritious breakfast beverage. Now I don’t need to spend money buying expensive bottled soy milk – makes me more environmentally friendly and reduces my carbon footprint at the same time!