I have been contemplating about doing a little juice experiment for a while. I had a juicing machine for a while but I was not very happy when I had to throw out a lot of pulp. Firstly, that was not very cost-efficient (my whole bag of carrots disappeared after 2-3 days of juice-making). Secondly, I wasn't happy with the amount of food waste. Thirdly, my inner dietitian screamed at me for wasting the most nutritious parts of everything I put into the juicer (there goes all the fiber in your vegetables!!! unacceptable).
After a long internal debate between the inner dietitian, experimenter and financial chief, the Oster blender proved to be a pretty good investment (depending on how long it lasts).
Blending fruits and vegetables into juices/smoothies is good because (1) you don't kill the enzymes with all the cooking; (2) the action of the blade when blending may actually release or activate anti-oxidants; (3) combining a variety of fruits/vegetables can be beneficial - say spinach and orange - the Vitamin C in oranges actually aids absorption of the Iron in the spinach; (4) no waste as in you actually consume everything you put into the blender!
I usually just let my creativity decides what to put into the blender that particular day. But some good things to stock in the fridge are carrots, spinach, cucumber, stalks of celery, apples, oranges and bananas. For the juice of the day (pictured above), it has spinach (a handful), cucumber slices (another handful), two oranges and one banana (peeled, of course).
It tastes good and you get your daily dose of fruit/vegetables - that makes a happy me!
