About six months ago our family decided to start juicing.

This decision was fueled in part by watching several documentaries and revisiting our own diet. For those of you who don’t know we are addressing a few matters in our family through diet (e.g. arthritis, chronic sinus infection, autism).

We are roughly six months into this process and absolutely LOVE it! I wanted to share five reasons we love this process, a few “mentionables”, and then I want to share some pics with you with the thought that you might consider it too!

And now… the top five reasons we love juicing:

1. It is like drinking a glass of happiness. Literally you can feel the juice hitting the system, and the wave of minerals and vitamins DOES make an impact on your psyche.
2. It immediately douses your system with minerals and vitamins in doses you aren’t likely to get through your normal diet. In case you didn’t know, minerals and vitamins are good.
3. It replaces the cheap expensive sugary crap that we used to call good and drink for breakfast.
4. It gives us an opportunity to get great food sources into our body that we wouldn’t normally consume (e.g. ginger, beets, cilantro, etc.).
5. Every morning when I make the juice I know I am personally investing in the well being of my family.

A couple of things to be mindful of when jucing:

1. It cleans you out with the force of a fire hose… don’t drink if you don’t have access to a bathroom. Of course it doesn’t treat everyone the same but many are quickly purged by all of this goodness. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.
2. It takes time. I spend about 30 minutes a day from beginning to end (that includes cleaning the fruits, vegetables, and machine) in this process. Keep in mind that I make 2 adult servings (8+ oz.) and 6 kid servings (4+ oz).
3. It costs money. But so does that cheap crap most people put in front of their kids every morning.
4. You will have pulp left over. You can use it for lots of things. We use it for compost for our soon coming garden (that’ll help offset the cost of this venture).
5. Everyone in our family drinks the juice… everyday. I have a thought about eating… if it’s good for the parents the kids should eat it too! Don’t eat healthy and feed your kids junk! Eat healthy and have them eat what you eat too! OK, enough on that point.
6. Before you start, borrow someone’s juicer or go to a juice bar and try it a few times. Make sure you are up for this journey.

And now if you’re ready here are our two standard recipes:

ABC juice (apples, beets, carrots, celery). 

This is a picture of what goes into and what comes out of the juicer. This is Sherri’s and my daily portion (the kids have the same contents just divided into 4 oz cups rather than 8 oz.) (1 Granny Smith apple, 1 beet, 2 pounds of carrots, 5-8 stalks of celery)

Green juice (apples, lemons, ginger, cucumber, celery, and kale. Pictured here is 1/2 head of romaine lettuce since we had run out of kale).

This is Sherri’s and my daily portion (the kids have the same contents just divided into 4 oz cups rather than 8 oz.) (2 Granny Smith apples, 1/2 lemon, 1 inch of ginger,1 cucumber, 5-8 stalks of celery, 1/2 head romaine lettuce)

OK, now stop licking the screen and do something for me.

Have you juiced? Do you juice? Do you think this is stupid?

Will you share your feedback with me about juicing?

Thanks guys!