Wednesday, January 23, 2013

Juicing in 2013: From the BluePrint Cleanse to Home Juicing, What Works & What Doesn't

You can't swing a celery stalk without discovering a new juice bar on a Dallas corner.  Magazines and websites are extolling the virtues of juicing throughout their pages, particularly this January.

I've been a juicer, not of the Lance Armstrong variety, for years and have chronicled my juicing endeavors on this blog.  I did a spin on the grandma of the cleansing craze, the BluePrint Cleanse, in 2010.  In short, I'm a fan of their system but fandom doesn't come cheap.

Here's a link to one of my old standby, homemade green juice recipes made of kale, celery, cucumber and apples.   It looks sort of like the remnants of a bad hangover in a toilet bowl but it's tastes good.


I even tried to soak cashews to mimic the BluePrint Cleanse's famed Cashew Milk.  That didn't turn out so well.  You can become so your own personal juice mixologist.  It's easy to get wrapped up in creating new recipes.  The Wall Street Journal tackles home juicing Wednesday morning and a simple Google search yields millions of results.

So after years of doing my own juice thing, I'm kind of done.  Home juicing is a BEATING.  I have a quality Breville JE98XL Juice Fountain Plus 850-Watt Juice Extractor that obliterates apples, kale, celery and melons with ease.  But the amount of produce you have to buy to yield 16 ounces of juice is staggering.  And then you must clean it.  After every single use, you need clean the mesh filter so that fiber remnants of your produce don't stick to the machine.  It's messy and takes time I seem to have less and less of these days.  It's just more convenient, for me, to buy the juice. 

But if you're interested in tackling the home juice hassle, here are a few of my favorite juice combinations you can try:
  • Pineapple and mint
  • Kale, cucumber, apple and celery 
  • Cucumber and mint
  • Kale or spinach, lemons, celery and cucumber
  • Grape and lemon - surprisingly good but tough to make as juicing grapes is not easy.
  • Watermelon by itself or with mint - delicious!
Experiment with your own concoctions and find what suits your personal tastes.

A couple of other tips:
  • If you're juicing leaves, like kale, roll them up like a tortilla, so they are sturdier when they are fed through the extractor.  
  • Celery, cucumbers, apples and carrots (which I don't like juiced) are super easy.  You can just wash and push them through the extractor, no need to peel.
  • Avoid beets.  They are the messiest thing I've ever tried to slice and will stain everything.  An experiment with them once turned my grandmother's antique white dishtowel pink.
1 comment on "Juicing in 2013: From the BluePrint Cleanse to Home Juicing, What Works & What Doesn't"
  1. Just get a Vitamix with a filter bag. much easier

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