Juicing

Juicing has been something that I have wanted to do for quite some time now. Thanks to the generosity of my best friend I now have a Bella juicer. It was given to me as a graduation gift (I finished law school this year) and have been trying out new recipes every week. My favorite thus far has been a smooth and delectable combination of beets, carrots and a few other goodies from Bonappetite.com . I modified the recipe a bit for what I had on hand and it is included below. The number of combinations and flavors is incredible and I love experimenting  with a variety of vegetables and fruits that I had not tried until now.

Here  you can see two juices that I put together. The lean mean green machine consists of kale, broccoli, cilantro and cucumbers. And the pink drink was one that I played around with throwing in fresh pomegranate, a small grapefruit, a few apples, and some kiwis. I certainly learned my lesson with the pink drink, because although it tasted scrumptiously, the grapefruit made the drink a bit too tart.

The drinks are very filling and, as you would guess, nutrient rich. I get the produce used in my juices from my fabulous local coop, The George Street Coop, and there will be more on that in a later post. The Coop provides locally grown organic produce, so I know what I’m getting.

This piece would not be complete if in addition to all of the benefits of juicing I didn’t mention some of the downfalls as well. Despite all of its benefits juicing has brought a new list of challenges that I am meeting head on one by one. First among them is the waste created by the juicer. This particular model of juicer is a juicer and separates the juice of the produce from the fibrous parts of the plants. I am thus left with a great deal of material once I have finished juicing. Some of that material I incorporate back into the juice bottle to get the benefits of the fiber, however, there is still a lot left over.

Now juicing is not cheap, especially not when going with organic produce, and it takes a lot of raw material to get a little bit of juice. So I have recently built a tumbling composter (see photo, I still have to drill holes in the barrel) and have begun planning my garden for the next growing season. If I become ambitious I may even construct a small green house to get a head start, but I think I am getting ahead of myself.

In the long run, I think that juicing has inspired a host of other habits that I am going to be grateful for and enjoy. I look forward to gardening and continuing to try and reduce my harmful impact this earth. I’m a noob at both gardening and composting so we’ll see what happens.

I want to pose a question to you all. Now that I have some experience with juicing, I wanted to get the feed back from those of you who have tried blending. Do you recommend one over the other? A combination of the two methods? And if you use a blender that you like, which do you recommend? Thank you for taking the time to read and for you feedback.

BEET, KALE, CARROT AND APPLE JUICE RECIPE

Ingredients

• 1 large beet
• 1 lb of carrots
• 1 gala or empire apple
• 1 granny smith apple
• 1/2 inch of fresh ginger
• 1/2 of a peeled lemon