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!