Mixed Veggie Medley

When I woke up this morning, I felt like consuming something light and clean. A look into the fridge revealed a number of great-looking veggies, so the idea of a nice fresh juice came to mind. I knew Emily would appreciate it, too. This is not an inexpensive juice, but the taste is definitely worth the effort. So much goodness in one little glass!

Mixed Veggie Medley

Ingredients

4 large carrots

4-5 apples

1-2 cucumbers

2 stalks celery

1/2 head broccoli (about 3 cups)

1/2 bunch Italian parsley

Preparation

Wash all produce, cut into pieces small enough to run through a juicer, and juice. Makes approximately 1 quart of fresh, delicious juice.

Mango Grapefruit Juice

Did you know that a large pink grapefruit can yield upwards of eight ounces of juice? If you're lucky you get a lot more than that. I just juiced a large pink grapefruit from Florida with a reamer and got a whopping 12 ounces of juice!

The following juice is a great way to start the day or infuse an afternoon with a little pick-me-up. It's a recipe from Easy Juicing by Nicola Graimes and she called it the…

Marilyn Mango

Ingredients:

1 pink grapefruit, halved

1 large mango, peeled and sliced

Preparation:

Squeeze out all the juice from the grapefruit and blend with the mango slices in a blender. Blended mango gives juices a very smooth and silky texture and I love the creaminess of this blend. Pour the juice into two glasses if you're in a sharing kind of mood and give one glass to the one you love–or guzzle it all down by yourself. :)

Get a little boost through juice!

I've mentioned before that I really like my VitaMix blender and use it daily to purée soups, make smoothies, salad dressings, and even juices. Making juices in the blender keeps the whole food intact (well, in a chopped up sort of way) and retains all the fiber the fruit and veggies contain. Sometimes, though, I prefer not to have any fibrous texture in my juice and simply run all the veggies through a juicer. The advantage of juicing is that all the vitamins and minerals in fruit and veggies become readily available to our bodies. When blending juice and vegetables, the juice obviously retains the fiber content, thus slowing down nutrient absorption, which, I suppose, can be a good thing if you want to gradually stabilize your blood sugar. In any case, this morning, I made the most delicious green veggie juice using a juicer and thought I'd share the recipe:

Juice in a juicer:

4 large organic carrots

1 organic cucumber

1 large organic apple (I like Fuji, they're not too sweet and very juicy)

2 leaves organic kale, stalks and all

This makes approximately 16 oz. of great-tasting green juice. Enjoy!