Five Faves: Juicing

Linking up with Call Her Happy once again, albeit a day late!

Yesterday was a pretty full day with schooling for all four of the boys (3 at home, one at preschool), driving pretty much across our corner of the state, an oncology appointment (he's fine, no worries!), and then gymnastics and errands to run.   By the time I got home, I was pooped!   Forgive me for being a day late, but better late than never, right?  

We've started getting back into our juicing habit again recently, and people have been asking for our favourite recipes.   We don't juice as meal replacements, but more of meal supplements (I usually drink my juice as my afternoon snack with a handful of almonds, or before breakfast while I'm making the kiddos' food, or alongside my salad), so we don't really worry too much about variety.   It's "extra" for us - just a way to sneak in a few more nutrients into our daily diet.

With that said, we've found that we really gravitate toward veggie juices, with a bit of fruit for flavouring.   Theo especially seems to like the veggie juices (Yay!), so that's what we've been preparing since starting back up.  I'll throw in a couple of fruit-based juices into the list because, although we haven't made them recently, they're definitely in my top five!

My "recipes" really are just lists of ingredients.  Unless I state otherwise, just juice everything on the list at once and drink up!

1.

First up is definitely our staple juice.  We make this pretty much every other day, if not daily.  It's most delicious with red kale, but we've made it with the green stuff, too, and it's pretty darn good.  For this one, we juice:

1 bunch of kale

2 apples (we like fuji)

2-3 stalks of celery (depends on how big they are)

1 lemon

2.

My favourite morning juice is a green juice.  It took awhile to get over the idea of drinking something green first thing in the morning, but I love it now.  For this one, juice:

1 large bunch of spinach

2-3 oranges (valencia gives you more juice, so if you can find those, use them.  Navel oranges will require more fruit to get enough juice)

2-3 kiwi

Mike has started to have allergic reactions to kiwi recently, so we've dropped that one out of this juice and just doubled up on the spinach and oranges.   I miss the kiwi, but it's really good without it!  

3.

This one is really sweet and creamy.  We don't do it that often, but when we do - yuuummm!

1 small or medium sweet potato chopped to fit through juicer

2 carrots

1 large (or two small) red bell pepper

2 large ribs celery

1 1/2 inch knob of ginger

(source)

4.

It's that time of year when everyone starts sniffling and the colds start circling offices and schools.   For the past two years, I've made this juice at the first sign of any cold symptoms, and with one exception (when I was pregnant last year), the colds have disappeared within 24 hours.  I don't know if it's just dumb luck, or this juice really does have health benefits, but I'm sticking with it.    It's a bit hard to get used to at first, but after the success that I've had with not getting sick......it's worth the slight "grossness!"

1 lemon

2-3 cloves garlic

Juice them and then drink it quickly, like a shot.   You won't regret it!

5.

This one is my favourite "treat" juice.  The boys call it "Daddy's Apple Cider" because Mike was the one who found the recipe.  It's absolutely delicious, but definitely tastes more like a treat.   

2 apples (again, we like it with fuji, for extra sweetness)

6 apricots

a dash of cinnamon

Juice the apples and apricots together, and then sprinkle cinnamon on top, right before you serve it.  Yuuummmmmm........

We've got a few more regulars that we turn to, but these 5 are definitely my top juicing "recipes."   Try them out!!