We cook: Roasted Almonds and Almond Butter

This is another "recipe" that I made just because I happen to have a lot of something. ALMONDS.  I bought a giant bag of almonds forever ago telling myself that they would be a healthy snack...turns out I don't love snacking on almonds.  So yesterday, I learned how to roast and butter almonds.  It is very simple and can hardly be called a recipe, but I was excited because I got to try out my food processor for the first time : ) To roast almonds, I placed them on a cookie sheet in a single layer and baked them for 15 minutes at 350 deg. F (turning the almonds once about half way through).  I had heard a lot about roasted almonds on other blogs, but the difference between roasted and raw almonds seemed pretty minor to me.  Maybe I am missing something.Next, I put the roasted almonds into the food processor and started grinding away.  Pictures of the progression are below.  You can apparently make nut butter without roasting the nuts, but the roasting is supposed to make them a little bit easier and faster to grind up and also give it a "warmer" flavor??  I roasted them because I was scared of breaking the food processor the first time I used it.

Note: at this point, I removed half of the almonds and ground them in two batches because I realized that I had started with too many.

I was surprised by how well the consistency turned out.  It's just like peanut butter but tastes like almonds.  One blog I read said that homemade nut butter is good for about 2 months in the refrigerator.  I wanted to add some honey to sweeten the spread a little bit but the same blog said that adding honey, sugar, or maple syrup was fine and to add it near the end of blending but that doing so shortened the shelf life to a week or two.  I don't think that I will eat it that fast, so I am just drizzling honey on top of the spread when I eat it.