Juicing

I bought a juicer yesterday and I have been searching for recipes for fruits and vegetables.  I have so much fruit in the he freezers and when spring comes I will have more.  I cannot keep making just jam and jelly. 

I have worried about the fiber taken out of the food, but I am going to try it.  I did not buy a real expensive one, but I did get one that will juice carrots and it even juiced sweet potatoes.

The first recipe was really nice.  I bought 3 beets.  I had some apples and I used frozen blackberries.  I think they should be thawed to get more juice out of them.  I used more than a cup of blackberries and 1/2 inch piece of peeled ginger.  That make enough juice for the 4 of us to get about 3/4 of a cup. It had a beet taste and was rich looking and had an excellent taste. 

The next recipe I used 2 sweet potatoes peeled, 4 carrots and 1/2 inch piece of ginger.  I thought it had a carrot taste.  Very nice.  This made 1/2 cup for each of us.

I will experiment and see what we like and how much it will take to get a cup each for a serving.  I would like to get where we drink 1 cup of a fruit in the morning and a cup of vegetable juice in the evening.

I was told the cleanup would be hard and it was not at all hard.  I have been told it is expensive and that it is, but I have a garden.  I have blackberries, raspberries, strawberries, and rhubarb in the freezer.  I have five rhubarb plants that will be producing this spring.  I am going to make rhubarb lemonade here in the next day or so.

Organic beets are very expensive, so my plan is to grow a lot of beets and rotate them so I can keep getting them until fall.  I can freeze beets, but they will have to be blanched and that is not the same as raw juicing.  I have grown sweet potatoes and I may try again, but I hate to waste the space if it fails.  I can grow carrots too.  The herbs can also be juiced. I did juice the beet greens with the 3 beets that I bought. 

I decided that if we see any health benefits from this then I will buy a better juicer when this ones quits working.  I am also thinking of buying a Vitamix after Christmas.  My plan is for 2015 to be a healthy year and to make good use of our food.