Monday, January 9, 2012

more about green juice

more about green juice

Quite a few of you were asking about how we do green juice, so I thought I'd give it its own post.

The point of making green juice (rather than making a green smoothie), is that the juice is less sweet and more veggie-centric. We love green smoothies, but it was getting to the point where all that fruit, which green smoothies are loaded with, seemed like a lot of sugar, when what what I was really wanting was to get more greens into my diet. That was the point where I started craving a juicer (more on the juicer below).

Juicing is really "anything goes", but we do stick to more or less a loose formula. We also don't want it to be all vegetables because I want the children to drink it too--so we add some apples to sweeten it.

Green Juice

--a good handful of kale leaves
--a head of romaine lettuce or a "heart of romaine" or two (I often buy the organic hearts of romaine at Trader Joe's and they fit perfectly in the juicer)
--a cucumber is nice to add because they are really juicy and add to the total volume
--an apple or two, depending on the size--to add some sweetness to the juice
--a lime or half a lemon, peeled

Feed everything into the juicer. I usually go in the order listed above. You might find the juicer doesn't extract a whole lot from the kale. Don't panic--just go forward. To get maximum extraction from green leaves you have to have a special juicer, which most of us don't have. I still believe I'm getting a lot of vitamins from the kale even if the juice doesn't seem that plentiful.

About buying a juicer: I agonized for months about this--I wasn't sure if I should buy a cheap "starter" juicer or go for something a bit more high-end, hoping my results would be better. In the end, my mom found me a good Breville juicer at the Williams-Sonoma outlet, for a really good price and she got it. Hooray! I love the Breville and would recommend looking around for a good price on one.

5 comments:

Angie said...

I love juicing! I made a juice the other day that even my kids loved... carrots, kale, lemon, ginger & beets.

I am currently doing a juice fast for the New Year to Detox. So far, so Good.

I have a Champion juicer that I bought on eBay. I LOVE it!

I have found that if I pack the greens as tight as possible, I seem to get more juice out of them.

Melissa Nichols said...

Sorry this is off topic, I was looking through your archives recently and noticed above your sewing table a line with clips on it to hang notecards and photos. Was it a kit? Do you know where I can get something like that? Please and thank you ;o)

Lacy@uphillandsmiling said...

Thank you for the recipe! I can't wait to try it. :)

HeatherLee said...

I roll the kale up and then put it in to juice. I have a cheap juicer and I always juice my pulp.

Rochelle said...

We just got a new breville juicer at a great price too! I have been looking for a good green juice recipe. I tried a beet juice recipe and I could not get it down. It tasted awful. Can't wait to try your recipe!