My Go-To Green Juice

So in October, Carolyn invited me to meet up with her for a girls' week in Spain and Portugal after her week of working in London - she's getting a lot of blog love lately :)  Knowing I would not be able to turn this offer down, we immediately started checking out travel blogs, booking flights and awesome spots to stay on Airbnb.com - which, if you have not used this site yet definitely check it out for your next vacation.  I'm pretty much tired of hotels at this point, so I love that there is a site where you can find awesome apartments, rooms or entire houses to rent for vacations and short term stays.  The reviews are super helpful too.  But, I digress. 

So we settled on Barcelona, Lisbon and Madrid.  Not too shabby.  Monica got to come for the Barcelona part too, which was so fun.  We ate (and even learned to cook) a ton of amazing food, drank our fair share (and beyond...whoops!) of local wine, and soaked in as much culture as we could in that week.  Photos to come in a post soon.

By the end of the week, I was pretty sure I didn't need to eat again for days.  While everything was really amazing and we thoroughly enjoyed our experience, there was a serious lack of vegetables on the menus there - so cheese, calamari and paella it was then, oh darn :)  I knew I needed to get back on track at home, and I knew the perfect way to help do that.  Juicing is something I got interested in a few years back.  I remember my aunt first telling me about green juice a long time ago, and not being able to fathom how anyone could possibly want to drink spinach?!??  This is of course, before I tried it myself.  

There are so many great juice recipes out there, and it really is so easy to make a great tasting and super nutritious juice.  Juicing really helps let your system take a break and easily absorb lots of vitamins and minerals.  I've only had juice in place of one meal since I've been back, but I can already feel my body thanking me.  While I have experimented with many different recipes, below is the combination I always find myself going back to.  Give it a shot, you may be surprised how much a glass of juice made with real ingredients will fill you up :)

My Go-To Green Juice

• 3-4 large leaves of kale
• 1 handful of parsley
• 1/2 cucumber
• 2 apples (I used golden delicious here)
• a couple handfuls of baby carrots, or 2-3 whole carrots

Wash your veggies and core the apples.  That's all the prep you should need to do.  Juice them in the order shown above, add a few ice cubes if you'd like, and enjoy!

 
If you happen to be in the market for a juicer (Christmas and the holiday season is coming up soon!), check out the Breville Juice Fountain.  We've had it for a couple years now and it does an excellent job of getting most of the juice out of your fruits/veggies.  It is a centrifugal juicer, so the spinning of the center piece does produce a small bit of heat, which cuts down on the nutrients you end up ingesting.  To help retain more nutrients in your juice, you can always go for a cold press juicer, but of course that often comes with a heftier price tag.  Breville does make both types, but I have not personally tried out the cold press version.  If you have, I'd love to know your thoughts on them :)

Breville BJE200XL Juice Fountain (Centrifugal)

 

Lime, Cucumber & Mint Infused Water

So this post is inspired by large hotel chains I've stayed at across the US -  no, really :)  I travel a lot for work, and in the midst of crazy hours on the job site, long nights programming in the hotel room and the extra stresses that come with being away from home, it seems to be the little things that really help make my time traveling even just a bit nicer.

A lot of the hotels where I've stayed will have an iced water dispenser in the lobby with fresh fruit soaking inside.  It's really nice to have something so fresh tasting and refreshing after a long day, that I decided to bring the concept home.

The hotels usually have oranges, strawberries, lemons, limes, or some sort of combination of these.

Here I've decided to go a step further and infuse some slightly more complex flavors.  I have a pitcher made pretty much exactly for this purpose, as it has a center tube to put your veggies/fruit in with slits to help the flavors infuse.  You could just as easily use a standard pitcher and enjoy the chunks of fruit as you drink :)

Lime, Cucumber & Mint Infused Water

• 1 Lime (a lemon would be great with this combo as well)
• 1/2 to a whole Cucumber, depending on size
• A few sprigs spearmint leaves

Chop up the lime and cucumber into rounds and then half them - this size fits nicely into the center tube.  Tear off the mint leaves and either scrape them while you chop (to help release the mint flavor) or use a mortar and pestle to grind them a bit.

Drop everything into the center tube, layering a bit.

Fill your pitcher with water, twist the center tube on the top, and let everything start to infuse.  Leave the pitcher in the fridge to keep chilled. 

This is an especially refreshing drink after an intense workout, or on a warm afternoon just chilling on the deck :)