Breakfast

I haven't been writing many new recipes, lately, because we've been enjoying the tried and true you see below. However, the season is changing and the fruits and veggies of the bountiful baskets are, too, so there may be more variety on the way. Nevertheless, this one is a favorite and is surprising delicious. Just be sure when you juice lettuce that you rehydrate it first--just soak the leaves in water and they perk right up. Otherwise, the drier wiltier leaves will likely clog the juicer, and unclog you.

Juice:
1 head green leaf lettuce
1 bag of grapes (any variety, but I do enjoy purple types)
2 bananas

yields about a quart.

Veg Breakfasts

See, you gotta think like Ocean Spray. Here's a company with waaaaaay too many cranberries. Sauce sells once a year for thanksgiving, and even that was a hard sell, I'm sure. So they got to thinking, what do we do with all these berries floating around? Juice 'em!

But, have you had cranberry juice? Even with a ton of sugar, it's enough to turn your face sour for a month. One time, when I was fourteen, and had just had surgery at the army hospital, the nurse...well, that's another story.

Anyway, Ocean Spray starts combining cranberries with other juices--apple, raspberry, pomegranate, etc. Suddenly you're buying cran-apple all the time!

So, what would Ocean Spray do if their bountiful basket was overloaded with bbell peppers one week...?

Juice:
2 bell peppers (red ones really have a great color in juice)
3 Asian pears
Enough backyard apples to make a quart's worth of juice

Here's another one my genius wife made up. Think to yourself, What would Ocean Spray do if their neighbors kept bringing over zucchini?

Juice:
A bunch of bananas
A bunch of zucchini
Surprisingly tasty.

Mellow Yellow

Do they give Nobel Prizes for the culinary arts? If not, they should, and I should get it. Today's juice is going to revolutionize the way we eat. That's right, I made summer squash taste good.

Juice:
5 yellow crook neck summer squash
2 nectarines
2 bananas

Yep, it's awesome. Slice up the squash and drop 'em in, peels, stems, and all. Not too sweet, and tastes nothing like a squash. Perfect.

Tomorrow I'll earn the award all over again, I hope: I'm taking on zucchini.

Three Juices in one day! What!

Started of the morning with an easy pleaser:

Juice:
4 Apples (I did two red delicious and two pink ladies; very nice)
2 cups of grapes
Yielded a little more than one quart

For lunch we enjoyed left over curry from yesterday:

Juice:
4 heads of broccoli
2 heads of cauliflower (these are surprisingly wet)Including greens
4 sweet potatoes, scrubbed with peels on
1 beet
Yields about two quarts

Prepare two chicken breasts using my squishing-between-two-cutting-boards method of tenderizing first. I salted the meat and coated generously in cinnamon before frying a large frying pan--I use a ten inch cast iron skillet. Remove the meat, and add the juice to the skilletover medium heat. I used about one tablespoon of curry powder, half a tablespoon of cumin, two tablespoons of cinnamon, two teaspoons of garlic powder (would have been better to have juiced a fresh clove), quarter cup of corn starch mixed into a little water for thickening, two teaspoons of ound ginger (again, fresh juiced ginger would have been better), quarter to a half cup of apple cider vinegar, honey to taste. Vinegar brings some bite and combined with honey lends a sweet and sour quality that I really like. Add the chicken back in, add a bunch of white raisins (I used about three quarters of a cup), make sure everything is hot, and serve over fresh hot jasmine rice. This was the very mild version: more curry powder and even a little cayenne pepper would be in order. Coconut milk would also make a tasy addition.

So, after that lunch, which was actually prepared yesterday, I was thinking that some sorbet would be nice in the evening:

Juice:
2 cups of grapes
1 box of figs (8-9 figs--they come in little rasperry box sized boxes...)
2 bananas

This is very creamy and super rich. I poured it into Pyrex bowls with lids and put them into the freezer; be sure not to fill them too full or they will erupt as they freeze and expand. This should be a good sorbet. I'll let you know tomorrow because this next recipe nudged the sorbet out of position.

We took a long ride on the scooter--Weston Canyon is very beautiful!-- and came back a little chilled: autumn is here, I think. So, I wanted something warm--something to keep my wife from turning on the heat. Hot fruit drink? Cider, of course.

Juice:
4 apples
6 Bartlett pears (when they're ripe, you've got to use them fast)
2 cups of grapes

I just put the sauce pan right under the juice spout. This yielded about a quart and a half, though, so I left enough in the pan for us to drink tonight and put the restin an airtight container in the fridge for breakfast tomorrow. Turn the stove to medium heat. Stir in about a half teaspoon of ground cloves, one teaspoon of nutmeg, and two teaspoons of cinnamon. I have about three cups of juice in the pot. Heat it up, stirring occasionally, and enjoy. It's a thick, delicious hot drink that will make you want more!

Whew! It's been a juiceful day.

Happy juicing!

On Bunches

I have a house full of women.

There's a women's conference at the university this weekend, so my wife's mom and sisters and sisters in law all come up and attend together for the two days. I've planning for it, though, and was well prepared: I've been saving three bunches of bananas all week. Kinda feels like when you've been preparing for a sporting event and now it's time to perform and you know you're ready, but there's still the chance that you could be beat. Kinda.

Then, I found a whole gaggle of pears in a dark cupboard, hoping I had forgotten they were there. That's like a fat Gatorade just when the pressure is on. Now I'm cool and ready to juice.

So, I made these two juices, which were good individually, but when I got them together like Hayley Mills it made one super smoothie juice with that particularly pleasant grittiness associated with pears. I think you'll like them all.

Juice:
4 oranges
1 gaggle of pears
A handful of grapes
Enjoy

Juice:
5 peaches
3 bunches of bananas
Enjoy

Combine those two, but be prepared for a tropical smoothie that is a sure winner. Yielded about three quests total. That ought to get those ladies going for the conference.

Breakfast

The last of the figs. This juice was very creamy--bananas do that--and had a particular flavor that was very delicious; a little like the feeling a blueberry has in your mouth, but not the taste. Must be the higher concentration of figs, since we couldn't taste it yesterday. Also a note on grape juice: we kept some in a pitcher in the fridge and some in a jar in the fridge. The pitcher oxidized and turned brown, like a cut apple, but I think the flavor is still okay. The airtight jar is the way to go for storage over a few days.

Juice:
7 figs
2 bananas
3-4cups of grapes

Full Bodied Breakfast

I need more vocabulary than, "This one was good." So, this juice was full bodied. The mangoes and peaches are very fine grained and so little pulp doesn't make it through the fine strainer in my juicer, the Hurom Slow Juicer. So it's a smoothie of a juice, and is quite flavorful and filling. I think that some diced mint would be tasty, and then frozen whis would be a good sorbet!
Juice:
1 Nerf football sized mango
1 banana
2 peaches
Some grapes to make a quart

Breakfast of Champions...and Rabbits

1 banana
1 head of green leaf lettuce
3 peaches

Regarding peaches, free the stone and the juice will follow.

On Grapes

When you're making juice everyday, you go through lots of roughage. A few minutes ago I juiced three big bunches of spinach and it yielded only about two cups. So, we use Bountiful Baskets each week to provide fodder for the juicer. This seems to be the best value in produce around here. But the best part is that you never know what you'll get in your basket each week, which means you get to be creative.

They've been supplying us with grapes the last couple of weeks. For a few buck extra you can get an entire flat of grapes--seedless table grapes, the small, super sweet ones that are not like the big ones you usually buy at the store. Thompson's seedless? Anyway, we've been drinking lots of grape juice. It's amazing how filling just juice can be.

But it's nothing like Welch's: even with a powerful juicer, the grapes leave some pulp in the juice. And it's actually very good. Last night I made two gallons of straight grape juice. After sitting in the fridge overnight it had settled and left the pulp on the bottom. I drank the pulp less stuff, and it was good, but not necessarily better. It's very sweet.

So, here are a couple of favorite grape mixtures from the last couple of weeks.

Grapiflower
1 head of cauliflower, including greens
6 tomatillos
Grapes to make 1 quart of juice total

Juice 'em and drink 'em!

Grape Cocktail
A handful of baby carrots
A box of strawberries, including greens
Two pears, just remove the stem
Plums, pitted
Grapes to taste

Lipeade
Eight key limes, peeled
Half a banana,peeled (takes the edge off)
Grapes to make at least a quart
Agave nectar for sweetness if desired; but I bet more grapes would do the trick.