Green juice made easy

The problems with green juices are many.  Unless you have an expensive masticating juicer, the centrifugal juicers just do not extract a lot of juice out of the greens.  You need to use a massive amount to get a little bit of juice.

Another problem is the taste.  Some green juice can be rough to swallow since it tastes like you are drinking a meadow or your freshly cut lawn.

I have searched for a store brought juice to add to my freshly made juice and was never able to find one that I was completely taken with.  Preservatives.  Added sugar in the form of fake sweeteners - even Stevia is not good for you - and other added ingredients that are not natural.

Enter Suja Juice.  No preservatives.  Some have added sugar, but most do not so read your labels.  This adds volume and taste to your our of the juicer green juice.

That amount in the photo is for 2 mid morning juices and 2 afternoon juices.  Here is the recipe

Easy Green
1 bag of spinach
1 bunch parsley
1 bunch dandelion greens
1 large cucumber
5 celery stalks
1 lemon
3 granny smith apples
2 wedges pineapple
1 23.7 ounce Suja Essentials Green Delight

I juiced all of the ingredients except the Suja.  Stirred the juiced juice and then divided the individual servings by filling each container half way with juiced juice and then the rest of the way with the Suja juice.

Easy and delicious.

Shortcuts

I am all for shortcuts in juicing as long as they are healthy.  I have resisted those pre-packaged juices you can get from the stores, but I guess in a pinch they will work if there is nothing else.  Just check the labels.

So today Memorial Day, I have decided to use a short cut juice to add sweetness to a kale juice.  I got the BoltHouse Juice - Mango Madness.  First off, mangoes are a pain to peel and slice.  So this makes sense.

I took 2 big Ball jars and divided the juice in it.

Then, in the Breville, I juiced a bunch of kale, 4 cucumbers, many stalks of celery and added it to the jars.

I will drink the one on the right today and the other, more full, is for tomorrow.

The Bolthouse added the right amount of sweetness and I added my own fresh blend to get even more nutrients in to the juice.  Sweet, delicious and good for me.

Enjoy the holiday and remember those that served and serve to protect our freedom.

So many juices, so little time...

Been playing catch up since coming home from vacation and then having my husband and 2 of the dogs come home earlier this weeks.

I will start with 2 juices I used fresh raspberries in.  Not a fan of that; however, that being said, perhaps if I added some honey it would have sweetened it up a bit and I would have liked it more.  Both were a little too green for me.  I used spinach in one and kale in another, a pint of fresh raspberries, banana, almonds and water.  Neither one were very "Smoothie" like and both had a very raw green taste to them.  Not a favorite.  Why do I post?  Because maybe someone will add honey and then post that it was a good juice.

The next juices are simply favorites of mine that I will use when I am doing a day fast.

Carrot Favorite

8 carrots
4 celery
4 apples
Thru the Breville juicer.

I simply love this juice.  Sweet, tasty, has a mild celery kick and it goes down easy.

Another favorite actually contains beets!  Yep.  BEETS

Sunshine Beet (right one)
2 peeled grapefruits
4 peeled oranges
1 lemon
1/2 large beet
thru the Breville.

I love this citrus juice.  Smooth, refreshing and good for you!

The rest are NutriBlasts

Smooth Yellow
Kale/spinach blend
banana
pineapple/mango blend
ginger
scoop vanilla protein

Has a hint of ginger.  The protein fills me up and gets me thru til lunch.

My goal this week to juice all day and eat sensibly at dinner.  I had gained a little weight on vacation and I am happy to report that I have shed those 5 pounds.  It was super hard these past 2 weeks since I had been eating food during the day while on vacation and I missed that.  Slowly, I re-trained my body, stomach, mouth and mind to get back on the juice and I am happy at the results.

I still have 20-30 more to go.

Back from Vacation

I spent 10 days up in the New Jersey/Pennsylvania area.  I did manage to juice on the road and in the hotel.  Have Nutribullet, can travel.

Traveling overnight to our destination, we packed a cooler with fresh ingredients - spinach, berries, protein, almonds.  One at our destination hotel, we made sure we got a fridge and freezer and bought frozen berries and a bigger bag of greens.  I kept everything in one bag so I wasn't rummaging all over the place for the ingredients.

We juiced every morning.  The rest of the day was a bust.  I gained 3 pounds.  

Today, I am juice fasting all day long.  I will NutriBlast my breakfast and lunch and I made my favorite juicer juice for snacks.

Favorite Juice

8 carrots

4 pears

4 stalks celery

small lemon

Through the Breville

Monday. Oh, Monday...

Follow us and join us on Facebook.    The Daily Juice

I had so many Facebook friends ask about my routine and ask about recipes, that I decided to start a group for all of us to share recipes and photos.

So.  We are back at it this week.  Trying to lose an additional 5 pounds before we go to New Jersey at the end of the month.

Lion's Tooth Lemonade
1 head of romaine lettuce
1/2 bunch dandelion leaves and stems
3 apples
1 lemon

I have had this juice before and it is quite good.  Tart and refreshing as a lemonade should be.

Sweet Beet
1/2 beet
4 oranges peeled
1/2 pineapple

** What a delicious juice.  Sweet with a subtle hint of the beet flavor.  I am definitely making this one again.

Both of these juices were thru the Breville and both are 2 servings.  These are our snack juices and we have a serving mid morning and a serving mid afternoon.

Recipes and more recipes... and lemons, too

Lemons.  What can I say about lemons?  In my backyard, I have 2 Meyer lemon trees that produced over 300 lemons last year.  Now that I know the benefits of lemons, I will never complain at how well those 2 trees produce.

Lemons are shown to inhibit and prevent the growth of cancer by protecting your cells.  They are also known to help aid in the prevention of a tumor from growing.  They have limonene - an oil known to help aid in the prevention of cancer.    Lemons are acidic to the taste, but when introduced to the body, are very alkaline.  Cancer cells can not grow in an alkaline environment.

Lemons are rich in vitamin C.  We all know the benefits of this vitamin.  A big glass of lemon water can help cleanse the liver and get it started for the day.

Lemons are also helpful in battling acne and promoting glowing skin.

I have 3 recipes that I used lemons in.

Watermelon Lemonade
1 small watermelon (personal size)
1/2 lemon (peel and all)

Simply put.  This was a delicious and refreshing juice.  I love using watermelon juice when I am tired of the green juices and the veggies.  This could easily be a summer sipper worthy of a poolside afternoon.

My next juice is a green juice.

Kale Explosion
1 bunch of kale
2 cucumbers
1/2 lemon
ginger
turmeric
2 apples
4 celery
dill
parsley
 *  I added the dill and parsley because I have it growing like mad in my backyard.  If you don't have it, don't worry about it.

Not sure where the red/orange is coming from on the bottom.  Maybe the apples?

And finally, an orange juice.  Just a note.  I did not use any oranges in this juice.

The Color Orange
1 large sweet potato
1/2 lemon
5 carrots
2 wedges pineapple
2 handfulls of power greens (baby spinach, kale and chard)

My versions...

Another pound lost.  I seem to have re-started my weight loss.

My husband has seemingly stepped away from the diet.  He has lost 40 pounds, claims he wants to lose more, but is not making the effort.  This is a hard diet.  Any diet is not easy, but this one seemed to be the easiest we have done so far.

Onward I trudge toward my goal.

Ridgeback Lemonade
Head of green leaf lettuce
bunch dandelion leaves
2 lemons
4 small Granny Smith apples

Very tart and very green.

My next one is my newest version of V-8

Meera's Vegetable juice
5 tomatoes
5 carrots
3 stalks celery
inch of jalapeno
1/4 onion
2 cups spinach
dill to taste
1/4 beet

We'll see how this one tastes later.

So as I move on with out my husband on this diet, I think it has actually strengthened my resolve.  I AM going to lose another 20 pounds and I AM going to keep it off.

Enjoy the day.

Change up

Normally I get the hubby to make the juice in the Breville and then I do the blended juices.  Today, I did the Breville since he was out late and still in bed.

I had an epiphany on Monday.  I am going to have to eat a burger on my cheat days.  It is what I crave and I am not satisfied until I have one.  Which usually means I cheat!  Yes.  On Tuesday, I had a burger at lunch. And guess what?  That craving ended and I found it easy to juice on Wednesday and I have no cravings today either.  I had the same thing happen the first week.  I wanted a burger, didn't get it and I was in torment all week long until I could eat on on Sunday.

My best advice is that you eat what you crave on your cheat days.  If you don't, you will continue to crave it!!

Cucumber Melon blast

Whole cantaloupe
1 cucumber
run it thru the Breville

It smelled delicious!  I can not wait to try it.

Spicy Greens
bunch of kale
4 celery stalks and leaves
handful of fresh dill
2 apples
cucumber
ginger
turmeric
small bit of fresh jalapeno
peeled lemon

The dill smelled outrageous going thru the juicer.  So delicious.

Experiment with your ingredients.  I know I do.  I remember some combinations to enjoy later and some I take off my list.

One of my new favorite ways to get beets in my system is the juice I made on Tuesday.  I made it again yesterday.

1/2 beet
4 peeled oranges
peeled grapefruit
1/2 sweet potato
5 carrots
turmeric

I call it the Hi-C.  It really calms the flavor of the beet down and it tastes very citrusy.

Enjoy your day.

Advice to new juicers

I think that since I have been doing this for nearly 60 days and my weight loss is 27 pounds, I can comment on what to do when you are first starting out.

1.  Decide how serious you are about this.  Do you want to lose weight?  Do you want to get more greens and veggies into your diet?

2.  How long do you plan to do this?  Is this something that you are doing for a month?  A year?  The rest of your life?

3.  Based on your above decisions, get the right equipment.
    a.  decide how much money you want to spend.
         - a blender will make a smoothie, but will not extract the nutrients you need completely.  You can can              get spinach and softer fruits to break down pretty well, but nuts and kale, hard fruits and most
           veggies will not break down.

            -  Nutribullet 600 or 900.  One of the best options.  The 600 is cheaper and will do the job.  These                   extract the nutrients and break down your fruits and veggies, nuts and seeds completely.  Easy to
                use, easy to clean and I highly recommend it.

             - Juicer.  One of the best options to get if you are looking to get the nutrients right in to your system               and looking for a consistency that is more juice like and less smoothie like.  Everything can go in
              the juicer.

4.  Decide how you are going to juice.  Do you have time to juice 3-4 times a day?  Or is it easier to juice all of your daily juices at once.  Don't worry about reading that it's not good to store your juice.  If you are drinking them all in one day, nutrients are not going to be lost.

5.  If you do not like the taste of vegetables, making them in to a juice is not going to change their taste.  You need to make sure you are adding fruit to the juice.  Pineapple is your sweetest choice.  Costco has a Festival blend that includes pineapple, strawberry, mango and papaya.  You can use it frozen or thawed Bananas also add sweetness.
Spinach is one of the mildest dark greens.
My advice is to make a green smoothie in the morning with your greens, banana and pineapple and then in the afternoon, do a more veggie one with pineapple added.

6.  Beets are not for everyone.

7.  Once you get your tastebuds used to it, move on to other greens such as kale, chard, etc.

8.  Use resources to look for recipes.  Pinterest is a great resource.

9.  Read ingredients on soy milk, almond milk and other "healthy" drinks.  You might be surprised.

10.  Lastly, enjoy what you make  If you did not care for a juice, tweak it the next time and see.  This is all trial and error.

And be healthy.

 

A Green day

Daily gratitude:  Hmmm...

Feeling the need to detox has got me seeing green.

For breakfast I blended the Power greens, 1 banana, 1 pear, sunflower seeds, water (ice in hubby's)

I added a little cinnamon to mine.

And it blended to a smooth consistency.  The pear adds a little texture to the smoothie, but over all, very tasty.

Afternoon juice was another green concoction:

Bunch of kale
6 celery stalks
cucumber
2 wedges of pineapple
pint of strawberries washed but not hulled
1/2 lime
nub of turmeric
nub of ginger
1/2 pear

This is a sweetened green blend that will get the good minerals and vitamins right in this afternoon and hopefully take the burgers and tacos out!

Yes.  My Sunday cheat day was awesome.

Monday, Monday

Now I am not gonna tell a fib and say I was very good this week end.  I did pretty good on Saturday.  Sunday was a true cheat day.  However, the good news is that I did not gain any weight.  Whew.

So now to detox and get back on track.

I have a bit of a scratchy throat from being out in the rain and cold on Saturday, so I wanted a juice high in vitamin C.  I also wanted our regular morning juice and a green juice to detox on.  I guess that means we made 3 juices.

The morning juice is the same - the spinach and fruit in the Nutri-Bullet

The juice on the right I will call Vitamin C Plus

2 ruby red grapefruits peeled 

12 hulled strawberries

ginger

turmeric

What a refreshing juice.  I can feel the vitamins going right where I need them.

Green juice is simple

Kale

half bunch dandelion leaves

1 wedge pineapple

celery

2 cucumbers

ginger

turmeric

Both of the juices went thru the Breville juicer.

My goal for this week is to lose 3-5 pounds.  I am determined to do it.  

Taking a break from green

It's Friday.  The end of a long week.  It is the end of the third week and it has been easier to juice.  I find that drinking the protein in the morning, followed by the breakfast green juice makes me fuller and more content through the day as opposed to spreading the protein out.

My morning juice is
2 cups grapes
1 banana
2 cups water
2 cups spinach
Through the blender.

I have had my fill of the green juice.  Going to switch it up with a carrot - celery juice for the afternoon.  did you know that celery is one of those negative vegetables.  You actually burn more calorie digesting it than it has in it.  Cool.

Carrot-Celery
4 carrots
3 apples
3 celery stalks
nub of ginger
Through the juicer.

Look at that color.!  Now I used BIG carrots and got enough juice for both afternoon juices.  So this will be my lunch and my afternoon snack.

Carrots are rich in antioxidants and especially, beta-carotene.  It also has tons of Vitamin K and is good for eye health and the do have anti-cancer benefits.

Celery is a great anti-inflammatory, especially  gastrointestinal anti-inflammatory.  

Enjoy your day.

Alone time

Daily gratitude:  Hmm.  Hard one today.  I know I am grateful for something, just can't think of it right now.

My husband is gone for the week end.  I am planning to continue on with the juicing.

My morning juice will be:

2 Cups pineapple
1.5 cups water
1 banana
2 cups of spinach
In the blender.

This is what I mean when I say in the blender.  I use this:

For the morning smoothies, the blender works fine on the softer fruits and spinach.  I can get the spinach chopped down finely.

For the afternoon, I am going to try the Sweet juice on Vmac and Cheese's blog site. 

SWEET GREEN JUICE

Makes a little over a quart of juice

3 granny smith apples (or any variety)
1 navel orange, peeled (I use the first steps in this technique to peel citrus of any kind)
1 lemon, peeled
2 inch nub of ginger, washed
entire bunch spinach, thoroughly washed
1/2 bunch kale, thoroughly washed

Through the juicer.

 When I say through the juicer, this is the machine I use for that:

 The juicer extracts all of the juice and most of the fiber making the juice more of a watery consistency.  I use this juicer for the beets, apples, cucumbers - what won't break down easily in a blender.  

I went to Hubbly Bubbly last night for dinner.  Click their name for the link.  I ordered the Hummus bowl with chicken and then added tomato, cucumber, lettuce, the Mediterranean salad and pickles.  I ate half.  The other half came home with me for dinner tomorrow night.  Good clean eating at the Hubbly Bubbly Falafel diner.  If you are in or near College Park, Orlando, Fl, it is a must try.

Place all ingredients over the lettuce leaves and enjoy.  Yummy delicious and low calorie!

Enjoy your day and juice for your health.

DAY 8 and shopping

Sometimes you just need Whole Foods Market.

Kale and spinach can be gotten most places.  Today, I brought home some Turmeric and dandelion greens. Yes,  Dandelion greens to go thru the juicer.

Have I told you I lost 8 pounds in 8 days?

Snack and Lunch
2 c of fresh frozen fruit blend (strawberry, papaya, mango, pineapple)
1 banana
1/2 avocado
2 c spinach
2 c water
In the blender

My old Kitchen Aid struggles to blend the frozen fruit.  I will probably thaw it a little more next time.  Texture was definitely more of a shake and felt shake-like.  Again, I am trying to get the fruit done in the morning and leave the veggies for the afternoon.

Afternoon juice will be a green juice.  Please remember that I am juicing for 2 people.  Take these in half for one person.

6 Kale leaves and stalks
6 dandelion leaves and stalks
1 lemon
nub Turmeric
nub ginger
3 apples
1 large cucumber
Run thru the juicer.  Drink right away.

By using a whole lemon, this dark green juice tasted like a green lemonade.  Lemon was the predominant taste.

Dinner tonight will be 3 ounces of pork loin, swiss chard and garlic and a salad.

Juicers and Clean up and the start of Day 8

Daily gratitude:  I am grateful for my ability to to sit on my hands and not post vagueness to Facebook or send out e mails until I have cooled down.

Pounds lost at this point:  8  EIGHT POUNDS!

I have also not taken my antacid pill in 6 days.  I took it every single day before I started to juice.

Juice for my breakfast is the remainder of the tomato juice made yesterday.  Remember to always drink the juice within 24 hours.  I did strain some of the pulp from it as I am not a pulp lover and it was very pulpy.

Let's talk about juicers.  I agonized over what juicer to get.  I read review after review after review and finally just decided to get the Breville JE98XL.  Am I happy with it?  It gets the job done.  I am a novice juicer.  This is perfect for me.  I do not intend to juice wheatgrass shots or anything else that needs a higher end juicer.  The Breville is just fine for me.

Yes, I have had some adventures with it - all my own fault for not making sure it was put together properly prior to juicing.  I have had accidents with my blender as well.  Sigh...

Clean up of the juicer is easy.  I read all those reviews that complained about clean up ad what a pain it was.  Seriously people.  Did you expect it to clean itself?  I mean, it is straining juice from vegetables and you expect easy clean up?

The receptacle is plastic.  The waste slides right out.  They do make bags for this OR you can use a produce bag or a plastic shopping bag if you are super lazy.  Ha ha.

I take the machine apart and immediately immerse the blade/strainer in warm soapy water.  It stays there while I clean the rest of the juicer.

Once I am done with the "other" parts, I rinse the strainer and then use the brush Breville sends you and I clean the strainer.  It may take a few times, but it comes clean.  Run it under clear water and then put it on a towel to dry.

Here is why I hand wash all of the plastic parts.  Some of them are dishwasher safe an some are not.  I don't want to try and remember which are and then make a mistake and have a melted part and a juicer that I can't use.  Handwash the parts and you are all set.

DAY ONE BEGINS

My daily gratitude:  I am grateful that I have a husband that will do this with me.

Day One has begun.  Can I do this?  

I started with this book:  40 Day Green Smoothie Diet.  Why I chose this was simple.  I needed some place to start.  I like fruit.  I like green stuff, but not as a juice.  Not yet anyhow.  This was simple, used a blender and seemed to provide for what I was looking for - delicious juice and weight loss.

The Day one smoothie made 48 ounces of juice and the author considered this one serving.  Certainly this is not right.  I watched her video and yes.  That is one serving.  Okay.  Maybe I won't be hungry and maybe I can do this until my body is ready for the hard core juice diet.  

 That was ONE serving.  Looking over the other juice diets, I am pretty certain that this counts for the breakfast and the snack before lunch.  So the lunch serving with be the lunch as well as the afternoon snack.

I CAN do this.  

I did cheat a little ad have a small cup of black coffee.  I will get off the coffee all together.  But baby steps.  It's all about baby steps.