For some people, juicing your fruits and vegetables is a convenient way to consume the nutrition, it’s fun, tasty, and just helps to mix up the mundane routine of broccoli and salad.
For me, that is why I’ve personally started juicing. I do it because I was bored of salads, they took too long to eat, and with a one year old, you barely have time to eat yourself. So I’ve had a Vitamix for a while, and decided to play around with some recipes. I hope you enjoy them!
Here are some tips I’ve found:
Get a good quality blender, my Vitamix is the shi*! I can even cook soup in the vitamix without using a stove or any other appliance to heat it! Get the recipe here.
Drink the Pulp
Many juicers extract the pulp from the fruit and vegetables, which in my opinion negates the benefits. Make sure you are drinking the whole plant.
More Vegetables than Fruit
It’s easier for us to choose fruits over veggies, there are more naturally occurring sugars in fruits! So, we need to be conscious and pick more veggies than fruit for your home juicing recipes. I recommend at least 3:1 ratio of vegetables: fruit in your juicing. You’ll notice my recipes are mostly vegetables.
Save Time
You can prepare a lot of your juice ahead of time. Some people make ziplock baggies for each day that they’ll be making their juice fresh and pre-plan the portions, so all they need to do is pour the contents in the blender. I prefer to use Mason jars for storage and making 4-5 batches at one time. Remember, my whole purpose for this is convenience, so I make this easy! I’ve found there is some separation that occurs, but, by simply shaking the mason jar well before drinking, there is no problem with the taste or nutrition of the juice. My juices have lasted about 5 days in the refrigerator in individual mason jars.
Money Saving Tips
Use frozen fruits and vegetables, buy things that are in season/local, use root vegetables. Root vegetables include things like carrots and beets, which are naturally sweet and taste great in juices! These vegetables are usually less expensive also. When you are using more vegetables than fruit, you will find it is cheaper!
My favorite recipes:
Ginger & Kale
2 cups loosely packed baby kale
~1 inch of fresh ginger
1/2 cucumber
1 small gala apple
~1/4 Lime (no skin this time)
1 cup water
Blend all together & enjoy!
Beets, Carrots & Mint
(makes 3 servings)
1 beet
3 carrots
3 cups spinach
1 peach
Fresh mint
3 cups water
Lemon juice
Blend all together and enjoy!
Beet, Spinach & Clementines
2 clementines
1 heaping cup of spinach
2 mint leaves (would add more next time)
2 raw beets
1 Tbs lemon juice
1 cup water
8-10 ice cubes
Blend together and enjoy!
Try out the recipes and let me know what you think over on Facebook!
