Simple juice

Recently I have found that when I cram in too many different fruit and vegetables to one drink my taste buds get a sensory overload. Keeping things simple allows me to really taste the one, two or at most three different ingredients I am drinking. Adding a wide variety of ingredients to one drink potentially increases the variety of nutrients that you consume.

I find that adding ginger makes juices taste even better. For example:

carrot and ginger becomes carrot, orange and ginger
apple and ginger becomes apple, spinach and ginger

There are many other simple juicer recipes available freely on the internet. One that caught my eye today was a cucumber, tomato cooler!

It's always nice finding recipes and hearing other people's take on what makes a great juice as it gives me new ideas to try out.

Apple, spinach and ginger juice

For breakfast I have predomenately been drinking apple and spinach juice. This morning I decided to spice things up by adding a bit of ginger. I am happy to say that it turned out to be a great idea. The sweetness of the apple cancelling out the green taste of the spinach while at the same time having its "too sweetness" being neutralised by the spinach. Then the ginger adds a slight twist just to keep things interesting.

Ingredients:

1 large apple
3 hand fulls of spinach
1/2 cm slice of ginger

This is going to be my fall back drink from now on.

Juice - April 29th breakfast

Today was a national holiday in Japan. As I was hung over from a staff night out I wanted something juicy to get me going. I headed out and came back from the supermarket armed with carrots and oranges for today's morning juice.

Ingredients:

2 carrots
2 oranges
1cm ginger

I used to love this drink when I lived in Australia. It definitely helped sort my hangover out. Sweet and juicy oranges for this drink are best otherwise it can taste a bit tart like mine was today.

Juice - April 26th breakfast

I've been sticking with my apple and spinach juice recently.

Today my son came over so we made juice together. He is much more interested in making juice than drinking it. Not exactly sure why as what we made today tasted really good.

Ingredients:

2 apples
2 carrots

Sweet but not too sweet and really easy to drink. We went shopping together today too so I've got a few more juices in store for breakfast this week.

Apple and spinach juice

Apple and spinach juice is a great juice to start getting accustomed to drinking spinach with. While some people have no issues going straight to drinking hard core green drinks, some of us prefer something sweeter!

The combination of apple and spinach is great. Combining the juicy sweetness of a crisp apple with the nutritious goodness of spinach makes a juice that is the perfect start to the day.

Ingredients:

1 large apple
15 stalks of spinach

You can adjust the quantites of spinach to your preferred taste. As with making any juice, it's always best to have fun and find your own best balance of fruit and vegetables, apple and spinach juice is no different.

The juice is dark green in color and tastes similar to pure apple juice although the spinach reduces the sweetness to make a thirst quenching somewhat sweet apple and spinach juice.

Juice - April 21th breakfast

Making my current favorite juice is getting me going in the mornings. It was apple and spinach again.

This time I used a bigger and juicier than normal apple which meant I could add more spinach while keeping it nice and sweet.

Ingredients:

1 big apple
12 stalks spinach

Making juice with this amount of fruit and vegetables gave me over 200ml of juice.

Juice - April 20th breakfast

I had planned on having another apple and spinach juice this morning but ate my one remaining apple last night. All I had in the fridge was a load spinach, a cucumber and a carrot. Not the most appetising but I wanted to have my morning juice.

Ingredients:

1 carrot
1 cucumber
9 stalks spinach

This produced a reasonable amount of juice. The juice was quite light but the taste wasn't all that great. Not bad, but making juice with spinach without something sweet like an apple is a little too extreme for me at the moment.

I'm all for green goodness but want to really enjoy the taste of the juices I make too.

Juice - April 19th breakfast

This morning I decided not to use my Magimix Le Duo juicer and instead pulled out my blender. Today's drink was a banana smoothie.

Ingredients:

2 bananas
soy milk

The ratio of bananas to soy milk was such that my smoothie was really thick. Too thick in fact. It was nice but it felt more like I was eating rather than drinking! Usually I just use one banana but thought that increasing the fruit content would be better for health.

Juice - April 18th breakfast

Still feeling sketchy when I woke up I knew that making juice was the order of the day. I found a host of vegetables from my week's juicing that needed eaten, or drunk, soon. This juice is all about using up all the vegetables loosing their freshness in my fridge.

I wasn't overly concerned with the taste of the juice I was to make. Rather I wanted to make juice full of a variety of vegetable goodness and have a lot of juice to drink.

Ingredients:
1/8 cabbage
1/4 lettuce
1 cucumber
6 stalks spinach
1 lemon

Making juice with the above ingredients produced about a pint of juice. Some of this was the water that I had rinsed the lettuce and cabbage with for sure.

The taste was okay. Quite watery with a bit, but not too much, lemon tang.

Drinking juice to cure a hangover does, in my experience, work!

Juice - April 17th evening

After a night out drinking too many beers and whiskey I came home and decided that making juice might help me avoid a hangover. I wanted to have something full of goodness and that I knew tasted good. My current favorite is apple and spinach juice.

Ingredients:

15 stalks of spinach (I think)
1 apple

I love making this juice. You can taste the spinach although it's not particularly strong and the sweetness of the apple makes it really enjoyable to drink. I think making this juice definitely helped nulify the after effects of drinking too much alcohol!

Juice - April 17th breakfast

I had planned to eat a grapefruit this morning but wondered whether juicing 2 grapefruits instead would give me more nutritional goodness. So I opted for making juice.

Ingredients:

2 grapefruits

My Magimix Le Duo juicer blasted through the halfed grapefruits using the citrus press attachment. Two grapefruits produced over 250 ml of juice!

The juice came out with some pulp and small seeds in it. If I was being pedantic I might have tried to remove the seeds but I couldn't be bothered! They were small enough not to really notice as I drunk my juice.

Making juice with just one or two ingredients and keeping things simple is attractive to me at the moment. Making grapefruit juice is a great start to the day!

Juice - April 15th breakfast

After making plain carrot juice the other day I have decided to keep things simple for the time being. This morning I wanted to drink some greens but also make a tasty juice.

Ingredients:

approx. 25 stalks spinach
1 apple

Making juice from apple and spinach is a great combination. The sweetness of the apple and the goodness of the spinach provides a delicious and healthy breakfast juice.

I will definitely be drinking apple and spinach juice again!

Juice - April 14th breakfast

For breakfast this morning I wanted to get through some of the green vegetables that I bought over the weekend. Making juice from fresh vegetables is optimum and I think I slightly over bought on Saturday.

Ingredients:

6 stalks spinach
1/8 cabbage
1/4 lettuce
1 cucumber
1 stalk parsley
twist of lemon

This drink was similar to water in consistency and had a dark green colour. Taste-wise it wasn't bad but at the same time not great. As green juices go though it was easy to drink.

Juice - April 13th evening

For tonight's juice I decided to keep things extremely simple. Adding a variety of vegetables is great as it allows you to get your nutrients from a wider range of sources. However as I want to work out the best combinations for myself, I want to know the tastes of the individual vegetables that I make my juices from.

Ingredients:

2 large carrots

Produced 200ml of carrot juice. I love it! Making juice from carrots alone produced a surprisingly sweet juice very similar in consistency to orange juice made from concentrate in a carton (without pulp) although without any tartness at all. Very easy and enjoyable to drink. Sweet without being too sweet.

Making juice from carrots alone is a simple juice that I love!

Juice - April 12th breakfast

Sundays is the day for hanging out with my son. So I thought starting the day with some freshly made juice would work well. He was much more into making the juice than drinking it mind you.

Even though I decided to use some greens, I thought the inclusion of an apple would be his ticket. He seemed to want to eat some apple instead though!

Ingredients:

1 apple
1 carrot
3 stalks spinach
3 stalks komatsuna
1 stalk parsley

Really easy to drink, kind of full bodied due to the carrot and nice to have some green goodness in there too.

Sundays will be my day for experimenting to find a juice that my son loves!

Juice - April 11th evening

I had a roll with rasins and cranberries and a vegetable juice drink for my dinner. Is it really enough calories? Not too sure. The juice I made was surprisingly nice considering the ingredients. It's the first time I've ever juiced cabbage!

Ingredients:

1/4 cabbage
1 cucumber
1/2 apple
1 stalk parsley

These ingredients produced a surprising amount of liquid. This may have been the result of water being retained by the cabbage when I rinsed it. The juice was sweet (apple) and had a bit of a tang (cabbage). I enjoyed drinking this juice and think it will be interesting to see what other juices I can make that include cabbage.

EDIT: It wasn't enough for dinner! I ended up having some chicken and eggs...

Juice - April 11th breakfast

Making Juice with my new Magimix Le Duo juicer may just be a phase that I am going through. I wonder how long it will last?

I am still experimenting with juice making recipes which I'm just making up as I go along! It's more fun that way. For my breakfast juice today I had the following juice.

Ingredients:
1 carrot (peeled)
1/2 apple
1/2 stick celery
6 stalks komatsuna
1 stalk parsley

It was quite a nice juice. Having the carrot gave it more of a full body and there wasn't a particularly strong greens taste. Possibly the celery diluted the komatsuna somewhat.

I think using carrots will allow me to increase the amount of greens that I use while at the same time ensuring that I actually enjoy the juices that I make. Also making juice with only 1/2 an apple may well help avoid over sweetening my drinks.

Juice - April 10th evening

Fresh from my sucessful juice making in the morning I wanted to try something a bit more hardcore. I wanted green vegetable goodness.

Ingredients:
1 cucumber (20 cm)
half stalk (inc leaves) celery
15 stalks komatsuma
1 stalk parsley

This vegetable juice was such a dark green it was almost black. It smelt a bit like freshly cut grass. I feared the worst!

Surprisingly it was easy to drink. It actually tasted quite watery which I assume was due to the cucumber and celery. It also seemed very mildly astringent.

About half an hour after drinking the vegetable juice I began to feel euphoric, almost like I was high on veg!

Is it possible to get addicted to making juice?

Juice - April 10th breakfast

This was my first time to make juice with my new Magimix Le Duo juicer! I was really excited to start the day with some vegetable and fruit goodness.

Ingredients:
1 carrot - peeled
1 apple - peeled
5 stalks komatsuna
1 stalk parsley

The idea behind making juice for me is to get loads of vegetable goodness first thing in the morning. This time though I decided to use an apple to ensure it would be palatable. It acually turned out to be a little too sweet though.

My fear of green vegetable juice being disgusting was unfounded, at this stage.

This juice was easy to drink if a little sweet. Adding more greens while making juice is the direction I want to move in.

Making Juice

Making Juice is all about the fruit and vegetable juices that I make primarily for my breakfast. I use a Magimix Le Duo juicer on a daily basis and am drinking hefty quantities of vegetable juice every day.

I love making juice! This blog is simply to record the various juice recipes that I use as well as my review of each vitamin packed beverage. Making your own juice is so easy. All you need is a juicer and whatever fruit and vegetables that take your fancy. I decided to go for the Magimix Le Duo because I bought one for my parents almost 10 years ago and it's still going strong!

As I currently live in Japan, the range of vegetables I have access to differs from back home in the UK. In particular the green leafy vegetables.

Making juice for my young son also means that I don't have to worry about him eating enough vegetables. He's drinking them!

If you're a juice fan, please leave a comment with your favorite juice making recipe.

Happy juicing!