Juice - "St. Patrick's Day Lucky Juice"

7 large leaves swiss chard

7 Bartlett pears

7 curly parsley sprigs (full length, including stems)

1 lime (not peeled)

Made just under 4 cups

I'm not a huge St. Patrick's Day person since I don't drink or stay out late (very often) but I thought this would be fun. My green beer alternative. A juice with only green produce was a new one for me (at least intentionally). I even picked only the white-stemmed chard from my garden. And I used the green dots glass straw from GlassDharma! 

Of course, you don't need to follow the 7-7-7 ingredients but this combination turned out amazing. If you like parsley a lot, I'd add more parsley. I think I will the next time I make this. The pear added the right amount of sweetness, the lime had great flavor, I could detect a hint of parsley, and the chard gave that signature "green" taste. 

I imagine that this juice would be great to drink to curb the effects of a hangover. Be careful, everyone! Don't drink and drive! (Alcohol of course...nothing wrong with drinking this juice and driving!)

Here's the "Healthy Shamrock Shake" recipe I promised!

Juice - "The Joker"

1 head romaine
1/4 head red cabbage
1 tray wheatgrass
7 granny smith apples

Made 4+ cups

I call this The Joker because everything was purple and green. The juice turned out a deep reddish color...kind of like cherry coke. This was very green tasting but in a good way.

Juice - "Red Pear"

5 leaves red kale

2 packham pears

made ~2 cups

I just love the way red kale looks. Purple veins in dark green leaves and a stem that's purple on the outside and light green on the inside. Red kale is less bitter than other kales making it a great choice for juicing.  You don't have to use as much fruit with this. If you aren't used to green juice though, I'd recommend adding an extra pear.

That's Dax--she didn't atually drink any--I knew she wouldn't though. Our cats were fed kibble (AKA crapple) for the first year of their lives (before we had them) so they don't know what real food is. It's very hard to get them to try food that's not in kibble form.(Thankfully we've got them to eat canned, pouch, and rehydrated raw food.)

Juice - "3 Kale and Apple"

4 leaves lacinato kale

3 leaves curly kale

3 leaves red kale

2 pink lady apples

1 granny smith apple

Made 3+ servings.

Not exactly the most creative name but any kind of kale + apples makes a great juice. If you add more apples (or less kale), this would even be a good starter juice for most people--even the vegephobic. (I probably wouldn't tell them it's kale until after they drank it.)

This was the first time I tried red kale. It's supposed to be sweeter than the other kale varieties. I would say it's slightly less bitter than the others.

I'm almost done uploading all my old juice recipes! I have a bit to go for the green smoothies still.

Juice - "Violet Brock"

1/4 head red cabbage

2 heads broccoli

1 tray wheatgrass

7 pears

Made 4 cups

Whenever I juice broccoli I get a lot of foam. Juice foam doesn't bother me nearly as much as smoothie foam because it's lighter and mixes in relatively easy.

It's kind of surprising that the little bit of red cabbage made the juice a purplish color. This was a thick juice but very tasty.

Juice - "Bloody Grass"

1 small beet
1 tray wheatgrass
1 bunch red kale
5 fuji apples
1 granny smith apple

Made 4 cups

I'm not personally a huge fan of beets but my husband loves them so I make sure I add them to my juice recipes from time to time. If you're not careful, they can add an overwhelming earthy taste. For some reason, my husband doesn't notice the earthy taste (or likes it) but just the sweetness that is inherent with root vegetables. I do love the intense red/pink color of the juice though. They will turn almost any juice red, even if you have a lot of greens in it.

This juice wasn't too earthy for my taste because the sweetness of the apples and red kale, and the green flavor of the red kale and wheatgrass helped cover it up. So both my husband and I were happy with this concoction.

Juicing Fail - Watermelon Radish

It was one watermelon radish but I don't remember how many apples and pears I used now. It doesn't matter because I won't be remaking this. I got really excited about the watermelon radishes I saw at the store so decided to get some. I read online that they are sweet enough to eat raw. So I thought it'd be OK to use a whole one in a juice.

And I was wrong.

This turned out so spicy it made my chest hurt. I could only drink a few sips. Oh well, at least it was pretty.  If I used watermelon radish again, I'd probably only use a 1/4 or even less. I didn't follow my own advice and taste the produce before I juice/blend it.

Quick Tip - Cleaning Your Juicer

Mine has grass in it b/c it's the
bowl I used to hold the ingredients

It's a good idea to run around 4 cups of water or so through your juicer after you finish juicing. This flushes out some particles and you have less work to do when you clean it. If you have a vertical single auger juicer like I do, then this water flush will allow you to juice a different kind of juice next without the flavors mixing. In that case, I'd run water through it until it's clear.

But wait--don't pour that "dirty" water down the drain! There are many ways to use that (extremely) watered down juice!

• Drink after exercising for a healthier alternative to sugary sports drinks.
• Pour on your compost pile.
• Water you outdoor plants.
• Use when cooking rice or other grains instead of plain water.
• Use when reconstituting dehydrated food/bouillon.

And if you freeze it in ice cube trays there are even more things you can do with it!

• Give to your dogs as a cool treat.
• Use as ice for iced tea or other drinks.
• Use as the ice in your smoothies.
• Lightly massage on puffy eyes.

Of course, the type of juice you make will depend on how you use it. You obviously wouldn't use the water from say a pear-apple juice for your savory rice dish but it would be great for boiling oats for a pleasantly sweet breakfast. Make sure you don't ever feed your dogs grapes or onions. (ASPCA Poison Control for details)

I'm sure there are many other uses for this "dirty" water--please share if you have any!

Juice - "Apples on the Lawn"

~7 leaves curly kale
1 granny smith apple
3 small fuji apples
1 tray wheat grass

made 3+ servings

You can't really see the wheat grass in the picture but it's there! I cut it up so it exits the juicer easier. Cutting it also prevents the grass from getting tangled around the auger.

This was a very crisp, green tasting apple juice. Would be perfect after spending a hot day outside.

Juice - "Magenta Haze"

~12 purple haze heirloom carrots

2 red bartlett pears

Made 2 servings

I was very excited to see colorful heirloom carrots at the store so I thought I'd try out the purple haze variety (even though they weren't organic). This juice turned out so sweet! And surprisingly thick and opaque--kind of like magenta tomato juice (from a can, not fresh tomato juice). There are ice cubes in the juice and you can't even see them!

Purple carrots get their intense color from the pigment anthocyanin, which is an antioxidant. The Possible Health Benefits of Anthocyanin Pigments and Polyphenolics is an interesting read.

Source: USDA "Carrots With Character"

Juice - "Green 'n Orange"

1 tray wheat grass

8 oz baby carrots

4 braeburn apples

Simple, nutritious, and good. You can't see it from the picture very well but the color of the juice is very complex--green and orange at the same time.

Juice - "Pink Fruit"

1/2 small head red cabbage

2 pears

2 braeburn apples

3 mint leaves (from my garden)

Made 2.5 cups

I wasn't expecting this to taste very good--not because I thought it was a bad combination but because the apples weren't very good (mealy), the pears and cabbage were a little old (but not bad), and my mint was a bit crispy (massive heat wave!). This must have been a case where the whole is greater than the sum of its parts! It was very refreshing on a sweltering day.

Yes, that's my cat, Worf, thinking about taking a sip. No, I do not let him up on the counter where I prepare my food.

Juicing Fail - "The Breaker"

Not only did this taste awful, it broke the strainer on my Hurom Slow Juicer. The carrot tops were very bitter and if the juicer had not broken, I would have added more apples or some pears to cover up the bitterness.

The Hurom has a warrantee so the part was replaced for free--but I didn't get it for over a month. I'm not sure why it broke...maybe I should have cut up the carrots more? This is why I would buy and Omega Vert HD--the strainer is 8 times stronger and suitable for juicing every day. Unfortunately, it came out after I got my Hurom.

I'm posting my "fails" because there is always something to learn from every failure.

I included the picture of the grocery bag because it looks just like the bags you see in TV shows and movies!

Juice - "Grassy Apples"

4 small braeburn apples

1 tray wheatgrass

Made 2 servings

This was pleasantly sweet--not too grassy.

I learned something from making this simple juice: I should cut up the grass before putting it in my juicer so it doesn't clog up the exit chute.  I had to stop it halfway through to clear it out and probably should have stopped it again. That's the trade-off with a vertical single auger type of juicer--it will juice fruit, veg, and greens (including wheatgrass), but you'll have to cut up those greens/stringy vegetables to keep the chute clog free. 

Arsenic in Store Bought Apple Juice?

You've probably heard of the controversy over Dr. Oz's show that was about the arsenic levels of store bought apple juice. The FDA countered that his tests did not distinguish between inorganic and organic arsenic. Oz is saying that the apples are from China and Chile and have toxic pesticide residue. This has left some people (including parents) wary of apple juice.

I don't know who's right but it doesn't really matter. I don't drink apple juice from the store. Why would I? Freshly made apple juice tastes infinitely better. Store apple juice is almost as bad as soda--high sugar drink without much nutritional value. Fresh juice contains enzymes and nutrients that aren't destroyed by the pasteurization process of commercially available juices.

Make sure you use organic apples in your juice so you don't have to worry about ingesting toxic chemicals. Also, if you're really concerned about arsenic, remove the apple seeds before juicing.

Juice - "Pale Yellow"

2 pears

1/2 lb yellow baby carrots

I was excited to find a bag of "baby" yellow carrots and wanted to pair (no pun intended) it with a fruit that isn't overpowering in taste or color. I really wanted the yellow carrots to shine in this juice. Pears are perfect for that. This juice had a very delicate flavor. Yellow carrots don't have the sharpness that regular orange ones do. 

Yellow carrots are high in bioavailable lutein, which decreases the risk for developing macular degeneration. Of course, these "baby" carrots are actually just carrots whittled down from larger carrots so you're missing out on a portion of the nutrients but these are still healthful.

Source: USDA "Carrots With Character"

Juice - "Healthy Limeade"

1 lb baby carrots
2 large leaves curly kale
1½ beurré d'anjou pears (the ½ because the other ½ was bad)
1 lime
Made two servings.

I had some produce that I really needed to use because it was about to go bad so this is how this juice came about. And I'm glad it did--it tasted like limeade--seriously! The carrot and pear sweetened it and I couldn't taste the kale. Definitely a lot healthier than a regular limeade. I can't wait to make this again!

Juice - "The Ole Standby"

This is what make when I want something I know will taste good and be very healthy: kale + apple + carrots.

3 granny smith apples

6 large leaves curly kale

Handful baby carrots

Of course, you can change the amount of each--it's really up to you.  Nothing wrong with starting out with less greens--just don't drink a lot of fruit/root vegetable juice if you are trying to limit your sugar intake.

Juice Explained

Unlike green smoothies, practically everyone has heard of and knows what juice is. The difference is, juice you make in a juicer is vastly superior in nutritional value and taste than what you'd buy in a store. Not to mention it doesn't contain preservatives, sugar, dyes, "natural flavors", or any other number of additives. Even if you are lucky enough to find "fresh" juice at a store like Whole Foods, it's not as fresh as what you can make at home. And as time goes on, juice oxidizes and will taste less "alive" and lose some nutritional content (amount depends on how it's stored and for how long).

Probably not going to find broccoli-apple-parsley juice at your local supermarket

One thing to keep in mind is the caloric and sugar content of juice, especially if you are trying to lose weight or have a medical condition where you need to limit your sugar. (I do not offer any medical advice on this blog--consult your medical professional.) Drinking a large glass of fruit juice can be the same as drinking a soda--calorie-wise. (Of course a soda does not have the same nutritional value as fruit juice.) Root vegetables (beets, carrots, etc.) can also have a high sugar content. So probably not a good idea for anyone to drink a jug of juice a day. Personally, I don't drink more than one glass. And it's also probably not a good idea to drink sugary juice before bedtime. Don't forget, you can always save your juice for the next day in a canning jar--store in the fridge, of course.

A Note About Measurements

Some of my recipes contain exact measurements (oz, T, 5 leaves, etc.) and some are more vague (1 handful, 2 bunches, ). I will give the precise measurement if it's easy to measure/count or it's already been measured out. But there isn't really a point for me to pull out a scale or count how many grapes I used because these don't need to be precise recipes--it's not baking. For one, you might have a blender pitcher that's not the same size as mine. And your juicer might not pull the same amount of juice. Another thing is produce taste can vary greatly (not to mention your own personal taste). So 1 lime might taste great in my juice buy your 1 lime might not be enough for you. And my lime might be very sour and your lime might be pleasantly fragrant. With juicing, it's easy to taste and add as you go. With blending, it's a little bit more difficult to add more (especially if your pitcher is full) but not impossible. And hopefully you'll be able to be able to pick up tips and learn from my mistakes on here.

Sometimes I'll say exactly how much juice I got. That's because two of my containers for juicing are actually large measuring cups. Other times I'll just say how many servings. For juice, I consider a serving whatever fills up the pictured glass (don't forget the ice). With blending, I usually make a little less than what my pitcher holds (6 cups) so I don't even mention how many servings it is.