Cabbage and Cuke

You know those V8 commercials from the 90's that showed a man walking at an angle?  Everything would be cured by him drinking his vegetable juice.  I really understand that concept now that I'm juicing!  My whole outlook brightens as I down my daily juice.

Today's flavor is very dominated by cabbage and cucumber...which although is a nice change after all the turnip greens I've been drinking lately, I wouldn't say is extremely delicious.

V- Fusion:
1 c. red cabbage
1 cucumber
1 head romaine lettuce
2 plums
1 apple
1/2 c. mango

Turning Over a New Turnip Leaf

Well, now that I have bought two pounds of turnip greens, I'll be drinking a lot of "powerful" juice.  Today I used red cabbage with my turnip greens.  The cabbage juice is a rich red-violet color, but once I added all other ingredients, my juice was chocolate brown.

NOT Chocolate:
2 cups turnip greens
1 cup red cabbage
2 carrots
2 stalks celery
1 orange
1 apple

Have you had your Not Chocolate today?

Oh, Snap!

Want to drink a juice that bites back?  Then you want to use turnip greens in your recipe.  They don't look like much: weeds, really.  But they are sharp and crisp, and go a long way for flavor.  So refreshing.

The Strong, Silent Type:
2 c. turnip greens
2 c. spinach
2 celery stalks
2 oranges
1 apple

Dancing With Ginger

That ginger root has been staring at me from my produce drawer for the past 4 weeks.  A common ingredient in juicing recipes, but I haven't been brave enough to try it until juicing with my mom this week.  I only used a 1/4 inch sliver and although it smelled wonderful when I cut it, I really did not care for the overall flavor of the juice.

Drinking an Egg Roll:
1/4 inch sliver fresh ginger root
4 branches kale
1/2 beet
1/3 head iceberg lettuce
4 stalks celery
1/2 lemon
4 clementines
1/2 english cucumber
2 apples
1/2 c grapes

Fred Astaire, Ginger Rogers, dance on air.

Kale Without Apple

Throwing in an apple is a no-brainer for sweetening vegetable juice.  Until today I have always paired kale with apple, a bit ingnorant of kale's power.  Apparently, the fragrance of apples have always masked the odor of kale as well.  My daughter came downstairs after I juiced this afternoon claiming she could smell the kale juice all the way upsatirs. 

All Kale, All The Time:
4 branches of kale
1/4 head of romaine lettuce
1 english cucumber
3 mandarin oranges
1 plum
1 pear

An apple a day keeps the kale flavor away.

Cabbage Verbiage

"Ewww, what's that bad smell?"  My four-year old was less than pleased with the odor made the  cabbage wedges being pushed down the chute of the juicer.

Reading up on juicing cabbage shed some light on the problem of pungent juice.  One blogger recommends following cabbage and almond juice with a pure apple juice chaser.  Another juicer recommends carrots paired with cabbage, as it is a familiar flavor from most coleslaws.  I did also see the tip (in reference to a different recipe) to drinking odiferous juices out of a cup that has a lid, through a straw.

The verdict on today's juice?  I personally was not offended by the smell.  The flavor was light and fresh.

Stinky Drink:
1/3 head of cabbage
1 peeled cucumber
1 peeled grapefruit
2 apples

A side note of interest: I discovered that there is a trace of cyanide in apple seeds.  This does not affect people eating an apple who may swallow one or two accidentally.  But if the seed is masticated, (as a juicer would do) the poison would be released.  So, this small trace is reason enough for me to continue to cut the seeds out of my apples before I juice them (which is nearly daily!).