Juice Feast Day 3

Not as good of a sleep last night, stayed up over an hour later than I really felt good about last night (New Year's Eve), but woke up with my body feeling fine.  Not overly hungry, but I think I waited too long to have my first juice of the day. Feeling kinda tired and shaky this morning.  Nothing too terrible, though.  Will do some computer work and rest.

Feel almost like I have a current running through my body.  A humming I can feel.  Not a bad thing, just noticing it.

4:46 pm and I'm doing fine.  Took a little nap this morning and got over the initial blahs.

I thought that today I would share a little about my juicer and some recipes that I enjoy.

We purchased a Green Star Juicer about 6 years ago and have used it off-and-on.  We picked the Green Star because it is a masticating juicer.  It gets the most juice yield out of the fruits and veggies than it would if using a centrifugal juicer.  Also, the Green Star does not heat up and destroy enzymes in the live food.  The other issue that is most helpful for me is that the juice I make with my Green Star can hold it's nutritional value for longer than others.  When I was casually juicing, it was nice to have some juice for now, and to keep some in the fridge for later.  Now it is really important to me because I am doing my juicing in the evening, in preparation for the following day.  So far it has taken me about 2 hours to do my juicing when I haven't had any help.  There is a lot that could be shared labor, though, so that time could be cut in half if you had an assistant.

I have been taught that the body can only utilize 8 ounces of juice in 30-60 minutes, so I use half-pint glass canning jars to store my juice.  I fill it right to the tippy-top and immediately refrigerate.

Since I am making about 10 jars of juice to have each day, I like to make a variety of juices.  What I have done so far is start with fruity ones, and gradually move to veggie ones.

On day 1 I had a big bowl of cut up apples, pineapple, oranges, and grapefruit leftover from Christmas, so I juiced those right up and that made a wonderful juice.  I did an amount that I wanted, filled the jars, put on the lids, and straight to the fridge.  Then I went on to the next batch which was:

ABCs
2 pears
2 apples
2 beets
1 cup cabbage
3 handfuls of kale
3 handfuls of mixed salad greens (dark leafy types)

Turned out nice!

Then I made:

Sweet N Tart Citrus
3 cups fresh cranberries (which was perfect since they were marked down after Christmas so I bought a bunch!)
a half inch piece of ginger
3 oranges
2 grapefruits
1 lemon

In this case I found that my juicer didn't handle the citrus fruits that well, so I used my citrus juicer for those, and ran the cranberries and ginger through the Green Star, then combined all of it.  The ginger was a new thing for me, and although it was ok, I left it out on the next day.  Also, I had some tangerines that I used in place of the oranges one day.  This recipe is quite tart, and I have found that adding about 5 drops of plain stevia to the mix works well for me.  Very, very refreshing!

On day 1 I also had a juice made with a bunch of tomatoes, and it didn't turn out that good.  I felt pretty sick after drinking that one, so probably won't be making that again.  Live and learn!

My standard basic juice recipe that was one of the first ones I ever learned is still one I enjoy.  It goes like this:

carrots
celery
zucchini
kale
dark leafy greens
half a beet or a whole one
an apple

There isn't a perfect right way to do this.  You can just play with the combinations and find what you like.  So many things taste different when you juice them as compared to eating them cooked or raw, so be open minded to trying new things.  You may not like cooked beets, but may love beet juice!

I have gotten some recipes from the Reboot web site, which is run by the guy who made the documentary Fat, Sick, and Nearly Dead.  I also bought The Juice Fasting Bible which has a lot of great recipes, as well as much advice and information about juice fasting/feasting.

It is more ideal to have juices freshly made, so I am going to try to move up my time of day for juicing to more like 6pm so that I can have some of that fresh juice right away, rather than saving all of it until the next day.  Know what that means?  I need to get off the computer and out to the kitchen!  Time to juice!

Difficulty level today on a scale of 1-10:  probably a 4.  Easier than day 1, but a little harder than yesterday.  Definitely NOT THAT HARD TO DO!  :)