Renewed Interest – Drinkin’ my Energy

My wellness habits occur in cycles. I don’t do this on purpose, but I tend to stick to something for a while, and then move onto something else. One thing that keeps coming up over and over is green juice. My weekend of juices in NYC (not all green) made me crave more when I got home. Man, it is so much easier to buy juice than to make it—and that is one of my sticking points to stay in the habit of juicing everyday. It just takes a while to do, and cleaning the juicer is not exactly what I would call fun.

However, in Natalia Rose’s newest book, Detox 4 Women, she proposes to make larger batches of juice and then freeze it (it’s not pasteurized so you can’t just leave it in the fridge for a few days). I decided to do this because I don’t want to make juice everyday, and anyplace local that makes juice puts too much fruit in it (for me).
The benefit is simply that you are intaking energy in its purest (almost) form. I tell people that drinking fresh juice (especially veg/green juice) is like drinking energy straight from the sun—only it’s better because it has other phytonutrients and enzymes and things that make your body thrive and it prevents disease. If you drink it in the morning instead of eating a regular breakfast, you’re also giving your body a break from the hard work of digestion (benefit: more detox, cell repair, and metabolism support). But, it’s not always convenient to do juicing yourself, and Wegmans misses the point with green juice by adding cider and pineapple (which, by the way, should only be added to juice if you’re drinking it immediately because the enzymes in pineapple digest the nutrients in the greens—so if it sits in the fridge or on ice in Weg for a few hours, you’re not getting the best benefits…and cider and pineapple add lots of sugar, which is not ideal either).

Yesterday, I juiced together:

a big hunk of ginger
2 limes
1 bunch of parsley
1 bunch of celery
1 bunch of kale
6 small granny smith apples (these are low sugar, and the best apples to juice b/c they don’t spike the glycemic index)

Everything was organic except the ginger.

I dumped this in smaller batches through a mesh strainer (my greenstar juicer produces an awesomely smooth juice with an essentially dry pulp byproduct and no wasted liquid, but the juice is a little foamy) into my large vita-mix container. It made a full 64 ounces, so I gave it a whirl (aerated it a little…or really just combined any leftover foam), and then poured it into 12 ounce jars. I drank some and froze some.

I’ll let you know how this all works out!