Benefits of juicing
We’ve told a number of people about these juices, and we’ve finally posted the recipe here. We found that when we drank the juices in the morning before breakfast we had a lot more energy throughout the day. When you drink a juice on an empty stomach, all the nutrients are absorbed into the body immediately through the stomach lining. This intense nutritional boost really helps the body heal itself and keep itself healthy. We used these juices along with mild exercise and were able to completely reverse osteoarthritis, get rid of minor food allergies, cleanse and heal the liver, and help in the recovery from a brain injury.
Juicers
Please note that there’s a really big difference among juicers. Our first juicer was a Juiceman Jr, in early 2000. One plus about the Juiceman Jr was the book of recipes that came with it – Juiceman’s Power of Juicing. Using the Juiceman Jr was a wonderful, inexpensive way to get into juicing. It did really well for a year, especially considering that we made three juices every morning for that full year.
After the Juiceman Jr we tried an inexpensive Waring juicer. That juicer was so loud that not only would it wake up everyone in the entire house, but the split second it started, the cats would run for cover. Our third (and current) juicer is a Champion. We found out later that it’s not the highest rated machine for juicing, but with our Champion we can make baby food, nut butters, purees, bread dough, ice cream, and frozen deserts.
There are a number of important factors to consider when choosing a juicer: juice quality; ease of use and cleanup; the yield; how it juices; power; replacement parts and reliability. The inexpensive juicers (under $100) are not really built for daily juicing. The plastic parts break and the motors burn out with heavy use. However, we did find that the Juiceman Jr was a wonderful, inexpensive way to get into juicing. A great link for more information on choosing a juicer is www.discountjuicers.com/compare.html.
Check out our Amazon Store under the Health & Nutrition category, to see some choices on some good quality juicers.
Making the juice
This recipe makes a spicy juice that will definitely wake up your taste buds in the morning. To reduce the spiciness, reduce the amount of ginger, garlic, cabbage, or beet (the cabbage and the beet can make the juice almost undrinkable if you use too much, so be cautious at first and add more if you want). Also be sure to mix up the juicier ingredients with the pulpier ingredients so your juicer doesn’t get jammed. You can use any combination of vegetables you like, and you might want to look up the nutritional makeup of them to see what might be most helpful to you.
The Juiceman’s Power of Juicing has some good recipes, and the Nutrition Almanac (3rd edition is the best) has a lot of information about the nutritional makeup of anything you’d want to use. (You can find these in our Amazon Store under the Health and Nutrition category.)
You can add any vegetables – including yellow squash, zucchini, potatoes, bell peppers, and any others that you have on hand that you think might be good. We picked this mix partly because these veggies were recommended for cleansing the body and partly because they were foods we liked and they were easily accessible.
A note about using potatoes: the starch is thick and tends to settle at the bottom of the glass which is really rather off-putting, but the taste is very mild and they’ve got great nutritional qualities.
Do drink the juice immediately – the sooner you drink the juice, the better the nutrition you get from it. And wash your juicer while it’s still wet, since it’s much easier to clean.
Ingredients: