Fresh veggie juice: carrots and greens

I’m not sure if you’re familiar with juicing, but I love it! I see it as my daily all-natural multivitamin. I don’t rely on it for my vegetable intake, I still do my best to eat plenty of vegetables and fruits during the day, but on those days when everything is hectic and I’m not eating as well as I should, at least I know that I had the equivalent of several servings of veggies. It’s great in the morning, I drink that instead of coffee, gives me energy for the day! (no crashing!)

Why is juicing so good? because although you don’t get all the beneficial fibres that are part of the whole vegetable, you get most of its nutrients (vitamins, minerals). Since we live in a society where it’s hard to eat enough good stuff, it’s a good supplement to use juicing in our daily lives. Because it is liquid, it gets absorbed much faster by your body. It helps your body to naturally detox and clean itself because you provide it with the nutrients it needs to do so. Greens are especially good since they contain chlorophyll, an essential nutrient we all need to live. This is good for everyone, young and old. It’s food! 🙂

Some benefits of chlorophyll:

Enhances energy
Detoxifies the liver
Eliminates body odor and bad breath
Cleans the digestive tract
Aides in the prevention of liver cancer
Is beneficial in cancer therapy
Helps with anemia
Aides in the elimination of mold from the body

If you suffer from various illnesses, headaches or migraines for various reasons, if you need to lose weight, juicing will definitely help. Like I said, it’s like a super awesome natural multivitamin; the best you can have (especially if you choose organic produce – if you want to know why organic is better, read my article about the benefits of choosing organic food or check out the full series about why you should choose organic).

This is probably one of the best known movies about juicing, Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead, everyone who watches it says it changed their lives. It’s Friday, you’ve got the whole weekend to watch it, take the time to, who knows? maybe your life will be changed too, for the better!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gpLQwWKb3l8&noredirect=1

I’ve never actually done a juice fast, but I intend on doing one in the near future.

Once you have a good quality juicer, the process is fairly fast and easy. About 5 min to prep your vegetables (using only organic produce, in order not to have a concentrated pesticide-juice), simply washing them and removing bad areas if needed. No need to peel since you want to keep as much nutrients as possible and most of those are right under the skin. No need to trim anything, it’s all good. The juice-making itself is about 20-30 seconds. Then you need 5 min to clean the machine immediately before it dries and the filter could be messy to clean later; I don’t recommend waiting.

So there you have it, in about 10-12 minutes a day, you can have a delicious veggie juice for everyone in your family (it doesn’t take any longer to make 1 serving or 4). Try to stick to vegetables only, you can add 1 or 2 organic Granny Smith apple to sweeten the taste a bit, but fruits are usually best eaten whole, with the fibre, in order to digest the sugar in it (fructose) properly and not get a spike in your blood sugar. All-vegetable juice seems to digest better as well.

If you go to a health food store that sells organic produce, most of the time you can buy a 15lbs of organic juicing carrots for much cheaper than buying smaller bags. Depending on the time of year, it can be anywhere between CAN$15-23. You might think that 15lbs of carrots is a lot, but it’s not. I go through almost 1 bag per week, and it’s just the 2 of us. I use the carrots for cooking as well. They might not look as pretty, but after being cut, they look the same and taste just as great.

Enjoy!

ECP xo

Quick and easy basic recipe.

Carrots and greens juice (2-4 servings)

• 6 very large organic carrots
• 1/2 bunch organic parsley
•  4-5 leaves organic Swiss chard (I do trim the bottom part of the stems, because it is a strong taste. You can use the stems in other recipes)
• 4-5 leaves organic collard greens or organic kale (bottom stems trimmed if you want a lighter taste)
• 3 stalks organic celery
• 2 organic Granny Smith apples, cut in half
• 1/4 organic lemon (washed, literally cut in 4 pieces, skin and all – make sure it’s organic!)

Wash everything, dry quickly so you don’t have a lot of water left, and juice! I suggest making 2 bunches with the parsley, and the collard greens, and juicing each in between 2 halves of the apple, in order to maximize the juice you’ll get out of it. When you juice greens, it’s easier if you make a tight bunch to put in the juicer.