1. make soy milk with my soyquick soy milk maker (add some dates to give it a touch of sweetness).
2. make nut milk with same machine.
3. make cashew milk by blending some cashews and water in the vita-mix.
The latter takes less time, has less cleanup, is more flexible on amount made, has the best taste and texture (most creamy), and costs less (than option 2, probably costs a lot more than option 1). That is the conclusion of this post, but here is what I did: I did option 2. I didn't want to make almond milk because you are supposed to soak and blanche and resoak for hours and hours. Too much work. So I decided to make nut milk with the soyquick machine, and just use some other nuts that are soft and don't need soaking. The manual calls for 2 cups of nuts. Wo, 2 cups of raw organic nuts and seeds is a bit pricey. I didn't have 2 cups of any one nut so I used a mixture of cashews, pecans, and pumpkin seeds (all raw). All you get out of that is 32 oz of milk, and a lot of nut pulp that you throw out (or compost). Anyway, I made the nut milk, and it was not white because of the mixture I used but I don't care about that. I added 3 dates by the way. The nut milk did taste good, though there was pulp in it. I drank a large, warm, mug of it with 2 tsp of date sugar and raw carob powder and it was very yummy. But, I could have made the same amount of cashew (or the same mixture I used) milk in the vita-mix with fewer nuts and no pulp---essentially it is using all the nuts in the milk, and it blends so thoroughly that it is much more creamy and is less pulpy than my drained nut milk from the soyquick machine. I made hot cocoa this way once and it was the best I've ever had.
So my take-away message is, when I want soymilk, the soyquick maker is good to use and is pretty easy to clean up, and is very cheap. It makes over 32 oz so I have to plan to use it over the next several days, which is easily accomplished. But if I just need a milk-like substance and maybe I only need 8 oz, I'll just blend up some cashews and water in the vita-mix. I'm not a fan of nutmilks made in the soymilk machine because it's expensive and wasteful (all the good nut pulp going to waste) and not as good as vita-mix cashew milk.