the juices I made for my juice feast

I enjoyed an incredible experience living on freshly juiced vegetables and fruits for most of the month of May.  It was the one of the very best decisions I've ever made and I wrote about this in my post, soaring! reclaiming my path to wholeness.  I officially began my transition back to food today, after 28 days with a green smoothie and then lots of juice.  It has been a fantastic experience that far exceeded my hopes and intentions and I highly recommend that if you're drawn at all to this, you consider daily juices or even a juice feast for yourself.   

Thank you for the many emails sharing your own interests in juicing and the way your relationship to food is changing.  I'm inspired by what you've shared and always happy to hear from you.  As since many of you have asked, here are my favorite juice recipes, ideally made with organic, locally grown produce for maximum benefit and low-impact :)

Joe's Green Juice.  This is my go-to juice.  I drink it first and last of each day while juicing.  It's the favorite juice of Joe Cross, whose documentary film "Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead," was one of my inspirations for starting my juice feast. Joe has a website, "join the re-boot" about juicing and it's loaded with recipes.  I actually got this recipe off the internet, as "Joe's Mean Green Juice" and it was the first juice I made and then I watched the movie, not knowing that it was the same "JOE."  The Universe has a good sense of humor :)  Since then I've become connected with Joe, he's a very generous guy with a lively Facebook page if you're inclined.  Here is his and my favorite green juice recipe:

• 1 cucumber
• 2 granny smith green apples
• 4 stalks of celery 
• 1 inch piece of ginger
• 6 large kale leaves--I use Lacinato or Dinosaur Kale.  (You can also substitute chard, collard or beet greens for the kale--I've tried them all and they all taste good.  And other have suggested spinach--which doesn't produce as much juice so you'll need several handfulls at least, but would also probably be YUM!)

Carrot, Celery and Apple

• 10 carrots
• 5 stalks of celery
• 2 golden delicious apples

Beet Juice Blend

• 2 cucumbers
• 1 large beet
• 1 golden delicious apple, 1 granny smith or fiji apple
• 1 1/2" pice of ginger
• 5 carrots

Watermelon Juice

• 1/2 small watermelon, juice the rind and all
• 8 large strawberries
• 2 large handfulls of parsley
• 2 mint leaves

Apple Ginger Lemon Juice (also good is Carrot Ginger Lemon)

• 6 yellow delicious apples or 10 carrots
• 2" piece of ginger
• 4 - 6 Tbsp lemon juice (to taste)

These becamea my standard juices.  I share even the simple ones, just to give you an idea of the proportions I found tasty.  I encourage you to discover your own balance.  Also, instead of making a single recipe, I often made 1.5 of the green juice recipe in the morning and evening as this kept me more full. Then I would have a carrot-celery-apple juice around lunch-ish time, and in the afternoon either a beet juice or a fruit juice like watermelon if I needed more energy.  I always ended the day with more of Joe's Green Juice.

There are lots of other combinations out there.  Mango-spinach is great--but mangos and I are distant friends, I get congested when I eat them (sad but true)...so I limited those.  I juiced cabbage and also didn't find that agreed with me and I can't eat tomatoes which would have probably also been great.  The only thing I actually didn't like the taste of was when I juiced mung beans.  (Ick!!!)  Horrible after taste.

Trust yourself and play with combinations.  You can taste as you go, adding more items to create a flavor blend that agrees with your palate.  I'm sure some of you have your own favorite and fabulous juice recipes.  Feel free to share them below.  

 

Comments

[thelma]

hi meredith can you describe how to start the juice feast is there any special preparation and how long do you recomended and what to do if you feel weird like hungry or maybe headache ... one more question how did you calcualte how much to buy for let say a week? monday thru sunday..

thank you :))

T..

[Liz Glasgow]

Hi M,
I'm looking forward to reading the answers to the above questions as well as, is it necessary to "juice" or is using a vitamix blender acceptable?
Thanks, Liz