Take the Pain Out of Home Juicing with This Easy Trick

Before juice bars became the 2013 version of the cupcake and yogurt shop boom, I was quite the home juicer. From kale blends and green lemonade to pineapple mint juice and a grape lemon medley, I could have opened my own juice bar with all the mixing I was doing.

Green Lemonade

Why did I stop doing it so religiously?  For one, the ubiquity of juice bars and offerings from Whole Foods made the process easier.  Mainly, I hated the beating of cleaning my Breville Juice Extractor.  It sounds lazy but cleaning the pulp out of the feeder chute and the blade is a pain.  The leftover pulp in the pulp collector can sometimes attract fruit flies if the weather is warm.  It's just a whip.

One way to ease the pain is to place a grocery store produce bag in the pulp collector.  This makes cleaning this portion of the juicer a breeze, serves as a great way to recycle those bags and collects the majority of the pulp in a bag that can be tied shut so it doesn't attract fruit flies.  The video illustrates how to use the bag.

You still have to clean the blade, which can be a challenge, but it makes one step of the process easier.

Looking for homemade juice ideas?  Try this one:

• One bunch of kale - this provides vitamins A, C and K
• One half a pear - vitamins A, B1, B2, C, E, folate and niacin
• One entire celery heart, think about 6 stalks with leaves and all - this provides a bevy of vitamins B1, B2, and B6

That mixtures yields this tasty green juice:

YUM! 

A Great Green Juice From Whole Foods That Will Appeal To All Palates

For those of you who just can't stomach a truly green, grassy juice, I've got something for you.

Whole Foods has become a big player in the pre-bottled, unpasteurized juice game.  They offer everything from green lemonades to watermelon juices and more.   I stumbled across a new green concoction at the Highland Park store that is amazing called Happy Trails.

It is a blend of kale, melon, cucumber, celery and orange juices that is simply delicious.  The primary flavor is fresh-squeezed orange juice with a hint of celery and cucumber.  The kale cuts the overly sweet taste many fresh squeezed orange juices have.

If you're looking to get some liquid greens in your diet, this one is a winner.  Double bonus?  It only costs a wallet friendly $2.89.

Like this?  You might like these:

• One of my favorite homemade green juice recipes.

• Curious about my lifechanging smoothie recipe that blends kale, almond milk and berries.

Juicing in 2013: From the BluePrint Cleanse to Home Juicing, What Works & What Doesn't

You can't swing a celery stalk without discovering a new juice bar on a Dallas corner.  Magazines and websites are extolling the virtues of juicing throughout their pages, particularly this January.

I've been a juicer, not of the Lance Armstrong variety, for years and have chronicled my juicing endeavors on this blog.  I did a spin on the grandma of the cleansing craze, the BluePrint Cleanse, in 2010.  In short, I'm a fan of their system but fandom doesn't come cheap.

Here's a link to one of my old standby, homemade green juice recipes made of kale, celery, cucumber and apples.   It looks sort of like the remnants of a bad hangover in a toilet bowl but it's tastes good.

I even tried to soak cashews to mimic the BluePrint Cleanse's famed Cashew Milk.  That didn't turn out so well.  You can become so your own personal juice mixologist.  It's easy to get wrapped up in creating new recipes.  The Wall Street Journal tackles home juicing Wednesday morning and a simple Google search yields millions of results.