Green Juice

Each Friday for the month of March I will be posting on some aspect of juicing. Get excited! If you are just joining us welcome! You can read about the benefits of juicing and the essential products you need to get started. Today I am super excited to share my family’s go to green juice!

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This juice is the perfect first thing in the morning (or actually anytime during the day). It is full of leafy greens! Kale, spinach, cucumber, celery, apple, lemon, and ginger create a hydrating and refreshing combination to get you ready for anything that comes your way during the day.

On a side note, I got a camera!!!! Could you tell? Probably not, but that is ok. I am still figuring out all the settings but I am beyond happy with my brand new Canon Rebel. Happy dance over. Now back to talking about the green juice.

I gave a brief overview below on the nutritional benefits of this drink and in the ingredient list noted which items should be purchased organic based off the EWG’s Shopper’s Guide to Pesticides in Produce. This is an awesome resource that I recommend everyone bookmark. I also recommend drinking your juice out of a mason jar. Everything tastes better in a mason jar.

Benefits:

  • Kale is packed with lutein (read why this is important in the next paragraph), vitamin K (associated with providing your blood the ability to clot), vitamin A (essential for vision and healthy skin), vitamin C, and calcium.
  • Spinach is a well-known “leafy green”. But did you know that it is packed with calcium, containing 30mg of calcium per 1-cup serving. It also contains lutein, which helps prevent muscular degeneration and cataracts, and is a rich source of folate, which helps prevent birth defects
  • Cucumbers contain mostly water they are and excellent food to help cleanse and wash away toxins. Toxins are often stored in fat cells and cause inflammation. But beyond just water content cucumbers also supply electrolytes to restore hydration of the body cells and balance the fluid levels in the body.
  • Celery juice is highly nutritious and one of the most hydrating foods we can put in our bodies. Because it is incredibly alkalizing, it equalizes the body’s PH, which is vital for peak health.
  • Apples contain antioxidants that help protect the good cholesterol levels in the blood. 
  • Lemons are rich in vitamin C (which is essential for maintaining a fully functional immune system), aid digestion, and have been proven to assist fighting cancer.
  • Ginger helps to reduce nausea, inflammation, and provides relief from heart burn.

Ingredients:

  • 6 leaves of Kale (organic)
  • 2 cups Spinach (organic)
  • 1/2-1 Cucumber (organic)
  • 4 Celery stalks (organic)
  • 2 Apples (organic)
  • 1 Lemon
  • 1″ Ginger root

Directions:

Clean and prep your veggies. If the skin on the lemon is on the thicker side you will want to remove the peel before juicing as it may make the juice taste slightly bitter. Start by alternating spinach and celery through the juicer. Wrap the ginger up into a kale leaf and juice kale and cucumber. Finish up with lemon and apples. Drink. This will make enough juice for 2 large glasses. Perfect for you and a friend!

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Even Caden loves it! We watered his down quite a bit but he had been eye balling our glasses for weeks. After talking with his pediatrician we received the green light to add this in to his diet. Yay! Josh was really excited to give him his first juice and was thrilled that Caden loved it!

Let me know if you try this and what you think. If you have never juiced before give your taste buds some time to adapt, but I don’t think you will need it, our bodies crave this stuff! Next week I will share a sweeter and fruity juice recipe that will be sure to please the entire family! Also I am putting together my final post for this series that will hopefully answer anymore questions you still have. Leave your questions thoughts, and comments below. Happy juicing!

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Comments

  1. Thats awesome Caden loved it! I am planning on giving brooklyn a TON of green smoothies this summer!

  2. I am loving this juicing series! I want to be healthier! I am not entirely unhealthy as we very rarely eat out and I cook everything from scratch, but adding things like these. I seriously love your blog! I was wondering about juicing, is it a lot more expensive? And this recipe for example, is that just one juice? I am more wondering how it is financially.

    • Hi Natalia! Great questions! I loved your post the other day on smoothies 🙂 This recipe is for two people 🙂 I can’t believe I forgot to put that. It will juice enough for two large glasses and could be divided even more if you wanted to give some to your kiddos also. We buy all our produce for several days worth of juices at a time and generally spend $25 for myself and my hubby’s organic veggie/fruit supply. I will cover pricing and how to get the most bang for your buck in two weeks 😉

  3. Tamara, when you do this, you’re just extracting the juice right? I usually use a blender and drink/eat everything, but it doesn’t taste very good, esp with beets! I might be doing it wrong?

    • You can blend your fruit and veggies but it will be very thick. When we juice our machine extracts the pulp out the back of the machine. Make sure that you are juicing organic beets if you are not already. Also you may want to add another lemon. Make sure you peel the rind of the lemons because sometimes the rind can be bitter and mess up the taste of the juice. Hope this helps :).

      • So you don’t eat the pulp, just extracting the juice? I heard you have to eat the pulp to get all the nutritions. Thanks for the lemon advice, will try that next time.

  4. We finally bought a juicer, so I have been reading through your old posts. Does the order that you juice these veggies really matter? Also, I am hardly getting any juice from my spinach (although I’m using baby spinach)…. Any extra tips or advice would be appreciated!

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