Juiced Up

I hope the claims of the many juice advocates are close to being correct because we are spending a small fortune on juice. For many years we had a Champion Juicer which sort of rips the juice out of veggies and can’t do much more than make carrot juice. That is, it can’t make green juice which the "experts" claim we need to insure good health. So, following the example of my two brothers we bought a Green Star Juicer which sort of squeezes the juice of stuff using a magnetized, twin screw, low heat device. Anyone who has owned a Champion has probably lost interest in making juice after a period of time because 1) you can get pretty tired of carrot juice and 2) the Champion is a bitch to clean up. Not so the Green Star. Easy to use and clean plus you can run just about anything through it. I’ve juiced blackberry canes in the darn thing. This is the great thing about the Green Star. No matter what you throw at it, it keeps on juicing. We basically have one juice recipe—everything. In the photo you can see that we are juicing: an orange, lime, cucumber, celery, apple, beet, garlic, sweet peppers, cabbage, ginger and carrots. The greens consist of a whole bunch of cilantro and Italian parsley, and copious amounts of kale and mustard greens. Other days the greens might include broccoli stalks, dandelion or romaine. This batch of fruits and veggies made about two quarts of juice, a two day supply. Some people suggest not mixing fruit and vegetables but our attitude is that it’s hard enough to develop the discipline of juicing every two days without worrying about food combining rules. Hopefully, we are getting all of the advertised benefit of vitamins, enzymes, phytochemicals and chelating agents in an easy to digest format. As anyone who has taken a shot of wheat grass at a juice bar knows, green juice can give you a kind of a head rush. Best drink this recipe seated. (Total time required from opening the fridge to reassembling the juicer after clean up—30 minutes). Note: anytime you add a beet of any size to your recipe the juice will be red.  This is what the juice would look like without the  beet.