Anyone do any juicing?

[Erin Pavlina]

My husband bought a juicer this weekend and has been going to town making fruit and veggie juices. Watching him put the stems and rinds in there makes me cringe.

The fruit juices are coming out okay, they taste excellent actually. The veggie juices are disgusting, except my husband likes them and so does Emily. Who knew my little 2 year old would be drinking kale, chard, spinach, carrot, cabbage, lime juice and liking it!! Not me, brother!

Does anyone else juice? How does your stuff come out and do you have any tips?

[karen]

Here is my big tip:
Do NOT juice celery - yuck!

We mostly juice carrots and fruits. I have The Joy of Juicing by Gary Null which has a lot of great ideas in it. Some of the recipes use honey I think, but otherwise the recipes I have tried have been vegan. There are evn recipes for brownies, sauces and dips that you can make by juicing.

[Erin Pavlina]

Wow, brownies by juicing? Amazing.

We have the Vita Mix which we use for lots of things (making cole slaw, fruit smoothies, hummus, dips, etc.) but the juicer is very different. It leaves the pulp out. I feel kinda bad throwing out all that pulp. Isn't that where the vitamins are?

What do you do with the pulp? Anything?

[karen]

Actually the Gary Null brownie recipe does use pulp from a veg- Can't find my book right now and I can't remember what the veggie is called. It looks like a white carrot.

Also in the Compassionate Souls book by JoAnn Farb she uses carrot pulp and mixes it with Bragg's Aminos, lemon juice, onion powder, kelp powder, celery, and avocados. Take all of this and put in the middle of a romain lettuce leaf and roll it up.

I've been thinking of making a compost pile to do something with pulp and veggie/fruit scraps.

[Erin Pavlina]

Interesting ideas! Thanks

[veganmama]

I have some great recipes for pulp. A carrot salad and a carot cake/bread one too. It is the Soul veg cook book. My most favorite vegan cook book around. Do you have it? The Carrot Supreme Salad is amazing!!!! (not to mention some of the other ones that have nothing to do with pulp) And one more thing, a great combo for juice is carrot, beet, celery. Yummy! VM

[chelle]

sorry if im a little late, but my favorite juice is lemons and apple, tastes like lemonade. i use about 3 lemons to 2 apples, and i use pink, sweet apples.
also good is carrot, apple, ginger, but when im in the mood for juice, i usually just use carrots + everything in the fridge that sounds good. sometimes it ends up good, othertimes not so much. but always interesting!

[VOW]

Juicing can be fun, and the end product is so beautiful! And I'm sure if a person has been ill, juicing is a great way to provide concentrated nutrition while recuperating.

It's just my opinion that massive amounts of juicing for the bulk of nutrition is not a good idea. As it is so often mentioned, the human digestive tract is designed for a vegetable based diet. The "stuff" that you discard after juicing is the necessary bulk your innards need to function properly. In fact, it's the passage of this bulk (along with water-water-water!) that "scrubs" clean the walls of the intestine!

Fiber is an important part of a healthy diet. It also slows down digestion so you don't get a huge carbohydrate dump into the bloodstream. The pancreas gets UPSET when that happens!

So, enjoy your juicer! But use juice as a snack, or a supplement. And that way, you can discard the pulp into the compost pile guilt-free!



~VOW