Gingermelon Juice

My son has been juicing lately as well - yeah, it's as catching as it is addicting - and he stopped by for one of my latest creations, and this is what we came up with! 

We're calling it GingerMelon! Ingredients today are: 
1/4 cantaloupe
2 pears
2 apples
1 lemon
1 cucumber
1 2-inch piece of ginger root
A bunch of spinach 

Stuff the spinach in the chamber first, and cut up the rest. Let the juicer do the rest, and enjoy this tangy, tingly, sweet, spicy juice! Excellent afternoon pick-me-up!    

Our New Favorite Orange Smoothie - BONUS BREAD

We've got a new favorite smoothie! 

We were going for an orange dreamsicle kind of thing, and what we ended up with was simply delicious...and has the added bonus of producing a batch of beautiful pulp for a tea bread that's to die for! 

Our ingredient list today includes: 
Two oranges
Two mineolas
Two carrots
One sweet potato
One avocado
Almond Milk
Vanilla 

Start by peeling the sweet potato and cutting it up. Then cut up the carrots, and peel the citrus. So far, so good! 

Run it all through the juicer and set aside. 

When you clean the juicer, take the pulp from the catch bin and save it for a surprise treat for later! 

Then, get out your blender, and prepare your banana and avocado.  

Avocados, for all their smoothie-goodness can be rather messy, so here'a a pictorial of the best way I've found to prepare them: 

Make sure it's nice and ripe - that is soft - but not too soft. Slice all the way around it to the stone the long way.   
   

 Once you have it split in two, give it a twist, and split it in half.

Once it's split in half, take a spoon and carefully scrape out all the avocado pulp into the blender. 

Cut up the banana into the blender, and then add the amount of almond milk that you would prefer. You will see that we did not use too much, as a straw stood upright in the finished product!

Set it to blending, and add a little vanilla to taste, (unfortunately all I had was imitation vanilla on hand...my bad...but it works.)

When it's well blended, start slowly pouring in the awesome juice!

Pour into glasses, and thoroughly enjoy it, and try not to fight over who gets to clean out the blender.  And like I said...check out this smoothie's thickness! That straw ain't going anywhere! 

Now, remember the bonus? I'm including a recipe for the BEST tea bread you've ever tasted. 

Get that pulp out, and measure out two cups...which is about what you will have with the ingredients listed here. Pick out any large chunks that may have made their way into it if you'd like. It doesn't really matter - they will soften with baking.   
 
This is just too easy. In a bowl combine the following ingredients: 
 2 cups of your pulp
3 eggs
1 cup of oil
2 cups of sugar (I use a bit less). 
3 cups flour
1/4 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
2 tsp of cinnamon
3 tsp vanilla

Give it to your Kitchen Aid, if you have one - (and if you don't...by all means, GET ONE!) - and blend it all together. 

Grease two bread pans well and fill them each with half the mixture. 

Put it in the oven at 375 degrees for 45 minutes. If you are as lucky as me, you can cook it in your wood stove :-). 

Take it out of the oven, and prepare to watch it disappear! I only had one loaf left to picture for you here!  

I'm going to go steal a piece before the rest of the kids get home! 

Happy Juice and Bread Day!

Summer in a Glass - Watermelon, Orange, Apple, Carrot

Everyone loved this one. Truly, it goes down so well, and with the cold wind blowing as I write this, it seems to me like Summer in a Glass! 

Today you'll need: 
A quarter of a watermelon
Four navel oranges
Two Mineolas (or one lemon - we're going for tart, here)
One Granny Smith apple (tart)
One Gala apple (sweet...you get the idea!) 

Cut the apples, chunk the watermelon, and again...you can keep a LOT of the white rind on...lots of juice in it! Peel your citrus with your handy-dandy Tupperware citrus peeler. (You DO have one by now, don't you? If not, you gotta get-you-one!)

Juice it all up - this makes a lot - going on 40 oz again - but two of the glasses got consumed before I could even get a picture. 

Yup...it's THAT good! 

To your good health and sun-shiney mornings!    

Grape, Mango and Kale...I dare you!

This was indeed an amazing juice. You almost can't taste the kale at all! 

Today's ingredient list is easy: 

Kale - which you can use the pre-bagged or leaf
Grapes - Red or green, sweet or sour, your choice! 
Mango - Make sure it's nice and ripe or it won't taste quite as good. 
Pear - A nice ripe one
Apple - One gala should do the trick.  

Once again, put all the kale right into the chute of the juicer before you even turn it on. 

Cutting up a mango can be a messy affair, so here's what I suggest: Lay the mango on it's side and cut to one side of the large, flat stone. Cut along the other side, and you have two sides of mango flesh. Cut the rest of the flesh off the stone if there is any left. (We live in the North, and mangoes are a far-away import, so we get them hard and have to wait for them to ripen usually. They also tend to be smaller here.) Take your knife, and without cutting through the skin, slice or dice the flesh. Then turn the skin inside out and cut off the flesh. works pretty slick.You can see I diced the pieces here. 

Zip it through the juicer, and enjoy the sweetness! Mango tends to juice thicker, it seems, so this ends up with a real smoothie consistency! 

Enjoy! 

Refreshing Melon-Aide

Here's the perfect mid-day pick-me-up juice, or after a work-out type of juice. It's very light, and can be made more zippy with a lemon or even some ginger. It makes a lot - but it's very "chug-able". Kinda reminds me of the Gatorade of juices. If you like the melon-y flavor, this will be a hit with you! 

You'll need: 

1/4 of a small watermelon (less if it's a big guy) 
A  bunch of kale. I'm using the pre-chopped bagged stuff here. 
One cucumber
One mineola
A bunch of fresh parsley, use amount to your taste. 
One lemon if you want it tart. ( I prefer it tart!)

Peel your cucumber if it's store-bought. Can't wait until I can pull one out of my garden - then I just chunk it with the skin on. 

Cut the rind off the watermelon and cut into chunks that will fit your juicer. You can leave most of the white rind on - it will just make it a little less sweet. 

Peel your mineola and lemon. 

I just stuff the chamber of the juicer full of the pre-chopped kale - makes it easier to work with. I used about a 1/4 of a bunch of parsley in this batch. 

Juice away! 

I know...can anything with this color possible taste any good?  

Answer: Surprise yourself and find out! My vote was refreshing!  
  

Pumpkin Pie Smoothie - Hold the pumpkin

This turned out so amazing! We drink it as a dessert smoothie, or even a bedtime smoothie on colder nights! 

Get out your juicer, and the following produce: 
Two apples, Four carrots, Two sweet potatoes, One lemon
A 1-2 inch peice of ginger root to taste.

You can also grab a banana and an avocado,  almond milk (I use unsweetened - you may prefer vanilla or sweetened), and cinnamon, and set aside. 

Peel sweet potatoes and cut up. Wash carrots, top and cut up. Wash and quarter the apples, peel the ginger and lemon.  Looks good! 

Run all that through the juicer, and clean up the juicer, and get out your blender. You can see about how much juice this made - not as much as I would make for 4 servings...but we're not done yet! 

Peel your banana and avocado, and cut them up into the blender. I use the wonderful citrus peeler on my avocados, so the shell comes off in four pieces if it's not too ripe. If it's too ripe, cut in half, twist apart, and scoop out the pulp with a spoon into the blender. 

Pour as much almond milk into the blender as you'd like - more for thinner, less for thicker smoothie, and give her a whirl. When well mixed, start slowly pouring in the juice. 

After you've added all the juice, add cinnamon into the mix - more or less to your taste. Pour, and enjoy this rich, cinnamon/ginger "pumpkin pie" flavored smoothie and just feel it being loved by every cell in your body! 

Let me know how you like it! 

Starting Point - Pineapple, Apple, Orange, Mineola, Carrot, Sweet Potato Sunshine

 Juicing. Go figure. Never thought I'd be a juice freak...really...I've always been a meat and potato person. But with a health crisis last year, the concept of juicing for health came up in my quest for a cure, and has not disappointed as a supplement to whatever else is bringing me back around to full health again. If you want to know more about that, check out my Nine Kids and Ink blog - but for now, I've had a lot of requests for my juice recipies, and here we go. 

Since this is the first entry here, I'll go through some helpful hints when it comes to juicing, and hopefully you enjoy this as much as we do. 

One catalyst to starting this was watching "Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead" on NetFlix. Seeing the results, I had to try it. We are a nation whose diet has become nothing more than a chemical shit-storm, and it's slowly poinsoning us. From my point of reference, it doesn't even matter what chemicals cause what disease...the fact is we are getting sicker as a people, and there is no debate whether our crappy diets are contributing to it. Research it...not that you don't already  know it. Read the list of ingredients on any package of processed foods. What you are reading is NOT food...it's synthetic food. I'll spare you my rant, but if your food does not remember where it came from, it's probably not worth the calories it takes to consume and digest it. If YOU don't  know where it came from, set it back on the shelf and back away slowly. It's not worth it. 

I will end the narrative here by simply telling you that once you change your thoughts about what you eat, the change comes quite naturally. If you told me I'd alter my diet so radically, I'd have told you you're crazy. I did not "try" this...I did not "commit" to anything...I do not deprive myself of anything. I don't need to. I had a sip of a Dairy Queen Shake of some kind yesterday and was quite sure I got a cavity right then and there. I could not deal with the sweetness! Really? Yeah...and it's awesome. 

I feel so much healthier these days. I have dropped I-don't-know-how-much weight (don't bother with a scale), but Mark needed to punch a new hole in his belt and I my size 10s are getting too big around the waist.  And we're not even trying to lose any weight. 

Anyway - enough blogging about it - here is today's morning juice! 

Here we have 1/4 of a pineapple, one mineola - for which you can substitute a lemon, two Gala apples for sweet, one Granny Smith apple for tart, two carrots, two oranges, eight small sweet peppers, and one sweet potato.

 

I generally use just a quarter of my pineapple and melons. You'd be surprised how much juice you can get out of them. Keep in mind, I am juicing here for four servings, so reduce or add fruits and veggies accordingly. 

My juicer has two settings: low for softer produce and high for the hard stuff. What I find is most time effective is to cut up all the produce starting with the hard stuff. I put it all in a bowl, so I juice the soft stuff first, then turn up the RPMs for the hard stuff. 

So, I peel the sweet potato and cut it up into two inch pieces and throw it in the bowl. Scrub the carrots and remove tops and cut up. Wash the apples and be sure to take any stickers off. I don't peel or core them - just quarter them and toss them in the bowl. Then cut the tops off the peppers and put in the bowl. 

When you  get to the citrus, I will give you the ultimate tip: Get a Tupperware citrus peeler. Totally Essential!!! Peeling citrus can be downright painful without it. Look how easy it is to peel with this magical peeler! Available CHEAP on eBay, or from your local Tupperware lady. 

The Essential Citrus Peeler! Makes it very, very easy to peel all citrus fruits, and also avacados!

Now, you will have a nice bowl full of fruit and are ready to juice it!  

See how much juice this made? It ended up being about 40 oz. That's a lotsa juice! 

And  this is the final product! Sweet, tart, with a little tang from the red peppers. A vitamin feast for you cells! 

Here's the thing about juice that makes you tick: You are getting all the nutrition in all those fruits and veggies, without having to digest the fiber. There is nothing in this juice that your body cannot use to it's good health.

One reservation I know I had to juicing was feeling like it was a tremendous "waste" of the pulp, as if you were not getting your money's worth out of the fruit. Couple of hints to scrap that thinking: 
1. Compost. 
2. Chickens.  
3. Recycle and use. 

If you have chickens, they will be the happiest chickens in the world eating the scraps and providing you with healthy eggs and/or meat. 

If you don't have chickens (and we don't - can't here in town :-( ), we have some incredible compost for our gardens! 

You can also recycle and use the pulp. I made some incredible carrot cake out of carrot/apple/ginger/sweet potato pulp. Moist and delicious! In fact, I have taken regular potatoes, juiced them and then re-combined the juice and the pulp for an amazing array of potato products including potatoe crepes, potato pancakes, and potato bread. 

A word about citrus: If you have chickens, you know they don't eat citrus peels. No creature does that I'm aware of. So, what to do with it? One is simply a potpourri - put it in bowls around the house and change often after it dries up. 

The second is to upcycle them into the best household cleaner on my shelf - one that is NON-TOXIC, actually WORKS,  and costs less than $3.00 a gallon.  You simply cut up the citrus peels a little smaller, put them in a quart jar and cover them with vinegar. Cover and let sit a while (a week or more) until they are nicely "pickled". (Yes, you could even eat them...). When it's done, pour it into a 98-cent spray bottle, and you have the best all-purpose cleaner ever. 

Next up will be a wonderful smoothie recipe that incorporates the best of your juicer AND blender. 

Most Important Tip of Juicing: Clean your juicer immediately. 

After I juice, I tip the juicer to empty it, and rinse and dry all the parts before I even touch the juice. It takes less than five minutes, and clean up is done. Stirring, pouring and enjoying your juice is now your incentive to take care of the "dirty work" and be done with it - until next time!