Pineapple juice

Recently I have started liking pineapple. Which was something I never expected to happen. Me the pineapple-hating-weirdo (according to a pineapple-loving father anyway)! The texture never did much for me and neither did the taste. But after deciding to just try it (the last time I had tried it I was 5 years old and craving a chocolate bar). I decided I now like pineapple as well as coconut -but that is a different story!

 

Seeing as pineapple has become one of my favourite fruits (I get favourites pretty quickly) I have had a lot of pineapple cravings. To curb my insatiable craving for pineapple a pineapple juice seemed an obvious choice.

So to your great surprise I  went and made a pineapple juice. I know, so predictable. But damn, that pineapple juice tasted soooo good! Actually better than good, more like A-MAZ-ING!  And it tasted completely different from pineapple juice you buy from a shop. To be honest, I don’t know why I was surprised as homemade stuff is always so much nicer than anything you can buy in shops.

This is probably my favourite juice because it is the easiest juice I have ever made. For the simple reason it only has one ingredient… pineapple! It is incredibly refreshing and an amazing colour.

 

Ingredients:

1 large pineapple

Instructions:

Top, tail and peel the pineapple. Then chop into juiceable chunks and juice!

Strawberry and oat smoothie

Let me take  you back to a morning, not so long ago, in my house. Everywhere is peaceful, I have a huge vat of green tea in my hand and am settling down with a good book. For once this week I have managed to awaken before the rest of my family. When from the not-too-far-distance crys of ‘Anyone making breakfast I’m starving!’ drifted down to my now very irritated ears. Dragging myself to the kitchen I realise we are low on food. Which is never a good thing. The contents of the fridge consisting of a punnet of strawberries, alpro soya milk and some manky looking blueberries I am stumped. What can you make with pretty much zilcho foodio in the kitchen. Oh yeah and we had a quarter of a packet of porridge oats left, nowhere near enough to make a bowl of porridge let alone 3 bowls.

Then the internet comes to my rescue yet again. With the very interesting sounding strawberry and oat smoothie. This recipe made one of the best smoothies I think I’ve ever had. Sweet, and filling. One small cup of this will make an amazing breakfast, snack or dessert!

And as is true of all smoothies it’s incredibly easy to make, all you need to do is prepare the fruit and whack it in a blender. Where a magical thing happens and a smoothie is made.

Now I know this is not a juice but it is so tasty I felt it necessary to include it in this blog.

I will remember to apologise to the wonderful readers of this blog for the fact that I have not updated this too recently. I am very sorry for not posting anything last week but I had an incredibly hectic week and just didn’t get round to making any juices. But do not fear! This week I have a wonderful juice recipe lined up and there’s obviously this beautiful little smoothie recipe.

This recipe makes enough to serve 2-3 people

Talking of which, the ingredients you will need are:

240ml soy milk

70g porridge oats

1 banana broken into chunks

half a punnet of strawberries (around 14 large strawberries)

2 tbsp of clear honey

Instructions:

In a blender blitz the oats until they resemble a fine powder (like flour) then add the rest of the ingredients and blitz until combined. You can add more milk if you want as this recipe makes quite a thick and chewy smoothie.

5-a-day juice

Amazingly the weather has stayed pleasantly warm! I share the surprise with pretty much everyone in the UK right now, happily surprised though! With it being exceptionally warm, a lot of water has got to be drunk. Unfortunately the water which comes out of our tap is very hard, cloudy and doesn’t taste great unless mixed with other things. So juices are the next best thing. But they are also great for getting vitamins in when you don’t really feel like eating -again something I don’t really do much of when it is warm, there are just better things to do when the weather is nice- so it’s a win-win situation!

Now, when I was down at the local supermarket celery was on special offer. In my true fashion I went overboard with the celery and bought way too much! A celery juice was called for and I stumbled across this one, which was perfect as I love tomato juice and thought the carrots might make the juice sweeter (which they did). It also meant I could get some of the vitamins from the celery without actually eating it, the texture is not to my taste and so I won’t actually eat celery unless it is cooked or juiced-another reason to juice!

My first reaction to this juice was “wow, that really tastes like a pizza!” what I meant was it tasted like the sauce of a pizza, but do bear in mind I drunk this juice in the morning (very early morning) and I am not a morning person. This juice is not a favourite of mine, but if you want a juice which is stuffed with goodness, this is it.

 

This recipe makes enough to serve 3 people

 

Ingredients you will need:

6 large, ripe tomatoes

4 large sticks of celery

2 red apples

2 large carrots

Instructions:

Chop and deseed the tomatoes, wash then chop the celery into juiceable chunks then blitz in the juicer.

Beauty and the beet

Hello my fellow juicers, once again the sun is high in the sky and I’m feeling good. After drinking this juice though I feel great! After having a hectic week-we are moving house in a couple of months and for the first time we are starting to pack weeks in advance- this juice was perfect to calm everyone down.

I am really getting into juices, I hope you are too, and love trying all the new flavours. The flavour of fresh juice is so different (in a good way) to cartons you can get from the supermarket, although it may be cheaper to buy juices I am not sure how big the vegetable juice side is in your nearest shop. At the local Sainsbury’s the only vegetable juice is tomato juice, and although I am a fan of tomatoes the juice tastes a bit too artificial for my newly-healthy taste-buds!

So once again I am going back to the trusty beetroot. Packed with vitamins and super-healthy the juice tastes delicious and the colour makes me want to cry with joy. This is quite similar to my other beetroot juice recipe but this one has cucumber in it! I will admit I raised an eyebrow at that one too, but the cucumber makes it a perfect juice to have after a workout. I couldn’t wait until after my run though so had it with breakfast and it was a great addition.

This juice is really sweet (thanks to the carrots) but has no fruit in it, which is good, the beetroot brings an earthy, natural taste and the cucumber is just really hydrating! I must also say cucumber juice is becoming a favourite, especially after my run as it hydrates you really quickly and is very refreshing. Though it is not such a favourite with my family as cucumber is not particularly liked (another reason to make juices with it… more for me!), if you are not too keen on cucumber either, feel free to cut back on the cucumber and add more carrot or beetroot.

I was looking forward to this juice mainly (I am slightly embarrassed to admit) because of the colour. I love the bright purpley-red colour. I must say I wasn’t disappointed either, the colour was great as it usually is! If you make this juice for nothing else, do it at least for the colour. I was tempted to not even drink this juice, just sit looking at the amazing colour! Yes, I am slightly nuts when it comes to colours, I have always loved them and always will! One day you too will become an avid colour watcher…

Moving on, here is the beauty and the beet recipe.

Ingredients you will need:

1 small beetroot

1/2 a cucumber

5-6 small carrots

Instructions:

Peel and chop all the vegetables into juiceable chunks, juice then serve. You may have difficulty juicing the cucumber -as I did- if the cucumber isn’t being flushed through, juice another couple of carrots to get the last of the cucumber juice out.

The magic greenie

Today I decided to make the first green juice I have ever made! Exciting stuff I know. Since I got my juicer I had always wanted to make a green juice as everyone seemed to be saying that green juices are the super-juices of juices. But, as is true of a lot of things, I just hadn’t got round to making a green juice. This afternoon I decided I just needed to make a green juice and quick!

While researching green juices I came upon this recipe. It was particularly appealing to me as there are not too many ingredients so it was easy to get the ingredients at short notice. A green juice was also a good choice as I recently read that fruit juices are a trap for people who are trying to lose weight, as they are high in sugar and calories. Definitely something I am trying to avoid. So I am sorry to say vegetable juices are going to be the main guest of honour on my blog site for quite a while. I will try and get a few fruit juice recipes but veg is the way to go at the moment, at least until I have lost a bit more weight.

 

The juice looks a much brighter green in real life, the camera hasn’t picked up on this but once you’ve made this you’ll know what I mean!

I will not hold you back any longer, I will now reveal to you the simplest (and one of the tastiest) green juice recipes you will find.

Ingredients you will need:

3 large handfuls of spinach

3-4 small carrots (depends on how carroty you want your juice to taste)

2 granny smith apples

Instructions:

Peel and chop the carrots, then chop the apples into juiceable chunks. When juicing alternate between a handful of spinach and a wedge of carrot/apple so as to push the spinach through the juicer.

Fresh Tropicana

Fruit squash was always a favourite of mine as a child, now I have matured (albeit a little) I prefer freshly squeezed fruit juice. My trusty fruit juicer has helped me to introduce more fruits and veg into my diet, such as the dreaded mango! As I said last week mango’s texture just makes me feel ill but mango juice is amazing!

Seeing as my juices have been a bit conservative recently I decided to spice life up a bit and choose a juice recipe which contained some tropical fruits.

This recipe I found contains pineapple, mango, lime and ginger. For a long time I didn’t think that I liked pineapple, the juice yes but the fruit no, amazingly though when I was chopping up the pineapple to be juiced I decided to brave it and try it for the first time in years. And miracle of miracles I actually liked it! One more fruit that I like… yay!

When I tasted the juice though I decided the recipe needed a bit of tweaking as it was a bit too bitter. Therefore I have cut back on the ginger and recommend you only use half a lime (add a whole lime if you like the flavour but for me it’s just a bit too strong). You could also add more mango if you want to make the juice just that little bit sweeter.

Now on to the recipe…

Ingredients you will need:

1 large mango

1 large pineapple

1/2 a lime

1/2 a thumb of ginger

Instructions:

Peel and chop all the ingredients into juiceable chunks. Then blitz in the juicer and serve.

Rhubarbade

Now I know this technically isn’t a fruit juice but it is just so delicious I had to include it!

 

 

Now my neighbour is a super keen gardener, she grows so much stuff that there is just way too much stuff for her to use all by herself. As an alternative to just letting all this homegrown produce go to waste she is always giving seasonal fruit and veg to me! Now I’m not complaining but I get so much stuff that even for me it’s difficult to use up all the organic stuff I get!

 

This week I got given a whole load of rhubarb, after making countless rhubarb crumbles/pies etc I was stumped and I still had four/five stalks of rhubarb. Then when flicking through my reader on wordpress I found a recipe for rhubarbade (the equivalent of lemonade with rhubarb instead though). I had enough ingedients  so decided to make it. After tasting it I knew that I just had to put this on my blog!

There are not many ingredients, yet it tastes amazing fresh and sweet!

Aside from one hiccup (I am not quite sure what happened to my brain, it must have momentarily switched off!) where I poured all the juice from the rhubarb down the sink instead of in the measuring jug and had to simmer the rhubarb all over again. Everything went very smoothly.

 

Now I will share with you the best rhubarbade recipe you will ever find…

 

Ingredients you will need:

2 cups of roughly chopped rhubarb

2 cups of water

1/4 cup of honey

Instructions:

1. Put the rhubarb in a medium sized pan, pour in the water and simmer until the rhubarb is soft (approx. 25 mins)

2. While the rhubarb is simmering, measure out the honey in a measuring jug

3. Once the rhubarb is soft, strain the liquid into the measuring jug containing the honey. Put the pulp to one side.

4. Stir the rhubarb juice and honey together to mix it all up then serve, can be drunk either hot or cold (it’s just as nice either way)

 

 

This recipe should make about 2 large glassfuls of rhubarbade and you can always double the quantity of the ingredients if you want to make more. If you pour the liquid into the measuring jug first time your juice should be a much darker colour than the rhubarbade I made (as it was for me), the slight hiccup earlier meant I had to re-simmer everything and therefore the colour wasn’t as deep. Unfortunately I don’t know what you can do with the pulp, I just had to throw it out any suggestions you may have as to what to do with the pesky pulp would be welcomed.

MO Juice (Mango and Orange Juice)

Now, I am pretty sure everyone has at least one thing that they like the taste of but can’t stand the texture of. For my sister this has got to be celery but for me it’s mango. I love mango juice but the texture of mango makes me want to throw up (charming, I know).

Because I love mango juice I decided to find a recipe which used mango. I happened to come across this one and, I must say, it was amazing! Definitely one of my favourite juices so far. This could be down to the fact it is such a sweet drink (my sweet tooth will be the death of me one day!) or the fact it is just truly delicious. Whichever way, if you make one juice in your life this has got to be it!

For a start it only needs two ingredients (orange and mango obviously!) and it tastes so damn delicious you will be scurrying back for seconds as soon as you have drunk the first (pretty quick judging by the time it took me to gulp down one delicious glass of this stuff).

The recipe as you will see is simply very easy…

Ingredients you will need:

1 large mango

4 small oranges

Instructions:

Peel and roughly chop the ingredients then blitz in your juicer. Alternate between putting in chunks of orange and mango so none of the fruit gets stuck (the orange is quite watery and needs to be flushed through with a chunk of mango). Serve and taste a little bit of heaven!

Belly settler

The first juice of the new week was one to settle my stomach… after a weekend of over-indulgence I decided it was time for a bit of TLC and after finding this recipe on a juicing website I decided to give it a go. The ingredients are all everyday foods so they shouldn’t be difficult to find and you may find you already have everything (as I found I did)!

I am already a fan of carrot juice (as you may have already deduced as a savvy blog reader) so this recipe was always going to be a popular one! The apples and spinach are just an added bonus, on the taste and health benefit front.

As you probably already know carrots are high in beta-carotene, very good for eye-sight and apples are high in phytonutrients which are good at lowering the risk of chronic age-related ailments such as reducing the risk of getting some cancers. Finally spinach is rich in carotenoids and flavonoids which are powerful antioxidant protection.

That should be enough health benefit waffling so on to the recipe.

Ingredients you will need:

5 carrots

2 apples

12 spinach leaves

Instructions:

Peel and chop all the ingredients and blitz in the juicer. Serve and enjoy!

Orange dream

This week I am going to introduce you to another mouthwateringly good juice. So get your veg together and start blitzing!

At the moment I seem to have a very savoury tooth so once again we will be juicing up a vegetable treat.

Just to confuse you this juice has no orange in it (however much the title suggests it) but is kind of orange in colour. However it does contain lots of lovely carrots, after drinking this you’ll be able to see in the dark!

This little orange number contains celery (good for lowering bad cholesterol), carrots (contain beta-carotene, good for your eyes) and garlic (helps lower blood pressure).

Although the colour of this juice is not particularly appetizing, once you’ve braved it and taken a sip you mouth is like WOW! how could something that colour taste so delicious?

Now, on to the juicing…

Ingredients you will need:

3 large carrots

2 sticks of celery

1 clove of garlic

  Instructions:

Roughly chop the veg (you don’t need to bother with the garlic clove) then juice in a juicer and enjoy!