Hannah the Juicer is a Voracious Eater!!

Thank you to those of you who have shown an interest in our juicing journey.  A number of you have asked that we post the recipe for our juice.  We have absolutely nothing written down but have ingredients that we use repeatedly.  Here's a list of the ingredients and the approximate amount we use.  Keep in mind that we make enough juice for Bree and Ginny to each have a 10 ounce glass...  Another note about the ingredients:  as much as possible we try to buy organic produce for Hannah.  We want to make sure that we aren't letting any toxins squeeze through our juicer and into our body.  That's not always possible, but using organic produce is definitely the best.

carrots - 4 medium size
celery - 2 - 3 stalks
brussels sprouts (yes, brussels sprouts!!) - 4
green beans - a good sized handful
broccoli - not the florets; use the part you'd normally throw away - one good sized stalk
zucchini - about a half of a large one
beets - about a third of a medium sized one
asparagus - a good handful of the ends that you would normally throw away
red, yellow or orange peppers - about a third to a half of a pepper
kale - 3 - 4 stalks
chard - 3 - 4 stalks
beet greens - a couple of stalks
ginger - a quarter inch slice about the size of a quarter
cilantro - a third of a bunch
parsley - a quarter to a third of a bunch

You can use any vegetables like cauliflower, parsnips, turnips, etc.  It's truly a matter of taste and availibility.  Bree and I don't use everything in our ingredient list each time because we don't have each ingredient all the time.  Here are our "we won't make juice without these" ingredients: carrots; ginger; cilantro

Here's what we don't use:  spinach and garlic.  Our friend Barb Bacon really tried to get us to use garlic because it has so many wonderful health benefits, but we couldn't handle the taste.  Now that we've been at it a few months we may reintroduce some garlic to the mix.  We found that spinach didn't stay fresh long enough for it to be economical. 

Needless to say, Hannah keeps us at the Farmer's Market and Whole Foods a lot.  Ginny has gotten Whole Foods to give us their broccoli ends if they aren't using them for soup.  They would normally compost them and have been generous about letting us have them.  The first time we "scored" some broccoli ends, they gave them to us in a clear lawn trash bag - seriously!!  Ginny could hardly lift the bag and had to answer some pointed questions just getting out of the store and across the parking lot.  Now they give them to us in manageable plastic bread loaf bags.

When we put all those raw vegetables out on the counter before we make the juice we are astounded at the amount of good nutrients we have before us.  It would be impossible to eat our way through all of these raw veggies, so that's why it's so wonderful to have the juice.  Making juice with the vegetables does NOT provide you with fiber;  the fiber is what Hannah spits out.  She extracts so much juice that what she spits out is the consistency of sawdust.  Ginny throws it into the flowerbeds around the house!!  So - if you want to join us on our juicing adventure remember that you still have to eat your raw veggies to get the fiber from them.  Just a salad a day should take care of that!