More recipes

Hello friends!

I want to share three more recipes with you-I decided to add three more days to my juice cleanse.  I've put the recipes below.  Don't be afraid to make up your own recipes-pick the fruits you like and try to commit to adding some kind of vegetable in there as well.  Guess what?  Fruit will mask the taste of any greens you decide to throw in there!  Why not take advantage?

So, for my second set of three days, I used the following 7 recipes:

Lemonade - recipe in A Three Day Juice Cleanse

Romaine-Apple OJ - recipe in A Three Day Juice Cleanse

Strawberry Fields - recipe in A Three Day Juice Cleanse.  I chose to substitute the apples for pears.  I actually liked the flavor even better!

Green Apple Juice
6 large leafy greens
6 sprigs of parsley
1 orange
1 packed cup of spinach-seriously pack it in tightly! You want a lot of spinach!
2 green apples
I used swiss chard this time.  If you use swiss chard, remember that the tough stem is NOT good for the juicer!  Cut the stem out.  For apples, I used one granny smith apple and one golden delicious apple-it gives a good sweet and sour balance.

Pineapple-Apple Juice
Half a pineapple, peeled and cored
One and a half apples
Half a lime-take off the skin please!  You don't want the bitterness of the pith in your juice!

Cucumber Carrot Juice-recipe courtesy of my roomate, Meg
10 carrots
1 cucumber-peeled if the skin is waxy

Green Mean Machine

3 stalks celery

2 packed cups of spinach

2 cucumbers-peeled if the skin is waxy

1 green apple

Raw Coconut Water
Again, this is not really a recipe.  You can buy it in the store.  Just make sure it's RAW and UNPROCESSED.

Almond Milk - recipe in A Three Day Juice Cleanse.  I'd like to mention that in addition to using cheesecloth to strain the almond milk, you can also use a very fine sieve.

Happy juicing!

Prepping for your juice cleanse

So now that you've all read about how to do a juice cleanse, you're all on board and ready to do it, right?? Well read this first because this will make the transition from your regular solid foods to drinking only juice MUCH easier.

For the two days before and after your cleanse, I recommend that you eat only raw foods.  The list of foods is endless but the main idea is that you are eating only raw, uncooked, unprocessed foods.  This will help prepare your stomach for only juice, and it will also help ease your stomach back to solids when your cleanse is complete.  

Some sources of protein for this are nuts, avocados, and peanut butter.  A great breakfast might be an apple or a banana with peanut butter and raisins.  You can eat as much fruits and vegetables as you want!

I also like to make my own guacamole out of avocados, tomatoes, onions, and lime juice.  No salt!!  Garlic is a good addition if you can mince it or chop it really small--no one wants to bite into raw garlic....well...I probably wouldn't mind, but I bet most people would.  Instead of dipping chips into it, dip fresh carrots or celery or bell peppers.  You may not believe me, but you'd be surprised at how filling this can be.  Make sure that when you store your guacamole, you cover it with saran wrap and press it down so there is NO air in between the saran wrap and the guacamole.  If air gets in, the avocados will turn brown.

 

 

Nuts are a great crunchy snack if you're like me and need something crunchy in your life.  Make sure that they are UNroasted and UNsalted.  Just plain old raw nuts.  One thing you'll notice, when you're done with this, when you do go back to your old peanut butter, or when you decide to eat salted nuts, you'll be amazed at how salty the nuts taste and how salty (and sweet!) your peanut butter tastes.

A huge benefit to doing this, aside from the obvious health reasons is that you gain a better appreciation for the ingredients in your food.  You begin to realize that you don't need all that added salt.  You don't need to add as much of your usual sweetener.  If you're a soda addict (like me), the soda will taste different.  Bread will be more filling.  Everything, for that matter, is more filling.  The changes that come from challenging yourself in this way are amazing!

A Three Day Juice Cleanse

Where to begin?  So I've done this before, a juice cleanse that is.  Everyone always asks me about it and wants to know more details so here we are!  I, in NO WAY, profess to be any sort of expert on this, I am only recording my thoughts.  I am not telling you this is the only way to do a juice cleanse, I am not a doctor, I can only tell you what I've found and share my experiences.  So, disclaimers out of the way, let's begin.

I need six or seven 12-16oz. juices in order to keep from being hungry.  The goal is to pick recipes that give you the biggest variety of fruits and vegetables, and I drink water in between the juices.  I promise, you won't be hungry!!  Start with the lemonade-it helps with digestion for the rest of the day.  End with the almond milk-you'll go to bed with a full tummy!  You can even warm it up a bit.  The others can be done in any order, it's up to you!  It's important to remember that this is NOT a diet.  This is meant to be a cleanse...something to detox your body, maybe give a kickstart to a weightloss plan you're going to start.  I find that once I've completed one, my eating habits change afterwards.  I make healthier choices in my eating-I eat smaller portions, I want less processed foods.  It reminds me how much I love fresh produce.  I like to do these every few months!  I try to see them as a challenge, and I find that if I see it that way, I really enjoy the cleanse!

I use a Cuisinart compact juice extractor.  It's pretty easy to use.  My only complaint is that the container that catches the juice is only 16 ounces.  I typically use it to make large batches, so to get around that, I empty the juice container into a larger pitcher and then distribute the juice into the containers for the three days.  I juice everything on the same day and divide them into 16oz mason jars (so I can reuse my containers).  I would not recommend making juice to last for more than three days.  It starts to go bad.

 

What follows is a list of the 7 recipes I will use for a three day juice cleanse.  I recommend that if you decide to do more than three days, that you vary you recipes so that you don't get bored.

Lemonade
3 lemons
Pour the juice of these lemons into a jar and fill the rest up with water.
I recommend taking all the pith and skin off the lemon.  You do NOT want a bitter lemonade to start your day off.  If the skin is REALLY thin, it's ok to juice the whole thing-you'll get more juice too!

Green Carrot Juice
1 handful of spinach
2 stalks of celery
4 carrots
1 green apple
1 handful of parsley
1/2 lemon
If you can, try to get the apple seeds and the stem off the apple.  It's ok to put the peel in but the seeds are a little hard to deal with.

Strawberry Fields
2 red apples
2 carrots
8 strawberries
I bet you've never had strawberry juice.  Most people haven't, but I am telling you, when you smell it, you may consider drinking straight strawberry juice!

Romaine-Apple Orange Juice
2 cups romaine
2 green apples
1 orange
2 stalks of celery
1/2 a cucumber
The orange should be treated the same as the lemons.  If the skin is thick, take it all off!  If you don't it will be bitter!  I also take the peel off the cucumbers if it's waxy.

Mint-Berry Juice
2 cups blueberries
2 kiwis
16 strawberries
2 cups of mint leaves
Take the skin off the kiwis and the tops off of the strawberries.  I take the mint leaves off of the stalks too.

Almond Milk
1 cup of almonds that have been soaked overnight in water.
4 cups of water
6 dates--please oh please take the pits out!!
1 vanilla bean
Ok so this one takes a bit of work.  But it is SO worth it, I promise.  So, the nuts need to soak overnight if possible.  You may not believe me, but I am telling you anyway....the nuts will get bigger!  They'll absorb the water.  Like if you squeeze them, you can ring the water back out of them!!  So after they soak, take 1 cup of them, and add them to a BLENDER with 4 more cups of water.  Yes, I said BLENDER.  Not your juicer!  Add the dates--no pits please!  And add the beans from the vanilla bean.  Have you ever used a vanilla bean?  Take a paring knife and split the bean longways.  Use the back of the knife to get the beans out of the skin.  Add that to the blender and blend everything together.  Next you have to put all this mixture through a cheesecloth.  What comes out of the cloth is your almond milk.  And it is SO good.

Coconut Water
Ok so this is not technically a recipe, but I buy RAW coconut water as the 7th drink of the day.  It has to be raw and unprocessed, ok? No sweeteners, nothing added.  Completely raw.


Before I conclude, I wanna talk about cleaning and the waste.  I don't know about your juicer, but mine needs to have the pulp cleaned out WAY before I'm ready to stop juicing.  So my process is that I assemble all of the ingredients for three days worth of ONE recipe.  I juice all of that together.  Sometimes, I have to keep watch on the pulp container because it can get clogged before I'm done with that batch of ingredients.  When I am done making that batch, I take everything apart and rinse the parts with the hottest water I can get out of the faucet.  That way when I start the next recipe, it won't taste like the last recipe I made.  Also it's good to give your juicer a break, and make sure that it's not working too hard.  The more pulp that stays stuck inside, the harder the juicer has to work and the less efficient it becomes.  This is carrot pulp.  I hear that there are recipes for things to do with all of the pulp.  It's a great source of fiber and I'm sure it'd be great for composting as well.  I recommend an apron too, the juices can stain, and I am telling you now.  You can be as careful as you like, but at some point, some kind of fruit or pulp or juice is going to fly up onto your cabinets or your clothing or the floor or all of the above.  It can get messy, but it's well worth it.  I put a dish towel under my juicer.  That helps a lot.

Waste...So we talked about the pulp, but I want to talk about the other waste.  All this produce comes in containers.  Most of these containers are plastic.  Some are in plastic bags.  Please, please recycle all that plastic!!

So that's a three day cleanse.  Remember that these recipes make ONE beverage each.  So to do this for three days, you would need to multiply by three.  I recommend drinking your juices in one of those shaker bottles that you can mix protein shakes in.  The juices can separate and it's helpful to have that little metal ball in there to mix them back up again.