First off:
Give me all your juice recipes, please!!
We've been juicing for about five months now and we are still loving it. My husband has jumped on board and it really helps me keep on track. Here are a few more tips I've learned to help with a juicing lifestyle:
Benefits - We find that we feel better when we juice. We are less tired, more energized, sleep better, and dream more. My skin is clearer, my mood is better. Juicing has helped us consume more greens, more regularly. Personally I could eat a salad every day, but they start to bore my better half. And honestly, I don't eat salad every day. If we juice, at least I feel we are getting some good leafy greens. Since we don't eat meat, juicing helps us get iron and other vitamins. We use all our veggies/fruits and have less waste. Buying lots of fresh veggies but not eating them before they went bad was really bumming me out. Now we don't have that problem.
Routine - It really helps me to keep up a routine with my juicing. We try to drink juice every day, but sometimes it goes a little longer. Rarely we will have more than one juice per day. We don't juice more than once a day for several reasons (I eat a ton of fruits and veggies besides what I juice, the machine is a pain to clean, juicing is time consuming etc...) but it's not a hard and fast rule. I try to keep track of when we juice, how many we drink and recipes in my Bullet Journal. We have mostly been juicing in the evening when my husband gets home from work.
Simple is Key - For a while, we were adding a million fruits and veggies into our juices. More is better, right? Turns out adding too many flavors is like the equivalent of mixing all the paint colors: you just get muddy brown. Since this realization I've been trying to limit to 4 ingredients plus apple. Apple almost doesn't count. I like to use apple as a sweetener, and to add liquid. I think apples do a good job of blending a juice. And an apple a day.... Although apples are good for you, I know store bought conventional apples aren't the best (factory farms, pesticides, etc...) This summer I plan to get apples in bulk (keep em in the cool basement) from local farms for all our juicing needs!
No Juice Fruits and Veg List - Along the way we have come up with a few things we do not like in our juices. In the earlier months, I used quite a bit of grapefruit bc I had a lot of it. But I've decided that I'd rather eat it than juice it. The bitter flavor doesn't enhance my juicing experience. I've tried romaine lettuce a few times and just don't like the flavor. Again, romaine is something I'd much rather eat than drink. We like celery and cucumber but only in low doses. We like the taste of mango, but not the texture. Try as I might, I'm not a fan of carrot juice. We also have had a few instances of having a veg we really like make our juice undrinkable. We got some kale that was so bitter and peppery that neither my husband our I could bare it. If it's questionable (something new, strong smell, etc... ) I try to taste test it first.
Juices We Love: There have only been a few juices that we have recreated more than once of twice. Here are three of our favorite recipes so far:
Apple, Spinach, Red Pepper, Lime
Apple, Orange, Cherry Tomatoes, Blackberries, Kale Stalks, Lime
Mixed Berry (Bluebs, Raz, Black, or whatever is at hand/needs to be used), Kale, Cucumber, Green Apple
Anyone else working on their juice journey? Please share links to your juice posts, favorite recipes, or ideas!