It is only October 27th and I am already feeling like the holiday's are well underway. Last weekend Steven and I hosted a fall party for my family and I made a smorgasbord of vegan junk food! The weekend before we ate our way through Chicago and the week before we had a birthday celebration for Steven (who is now 25! He's so old). Now I am looking at the calendar and realizing that from here on out most weekends are going to be party's aka bad food.Now when I say bad food you have to realize that my version of bad food is not like everyone else. I'm talking like I may have eaten some vegan cashew buffalo dip with some tortilla chips (my weakness) or something else with oil fats or nut fats in it. My digestive system is so clean and sensitive that I will immediately feel discomfort if I eat something out of the ordinary.
Having said all that, I am in the market for a good cleaning! I want to rev up my metabolism and immune system throughout the holiday season so I have decided to do a juice cleanse for the next
couple months. I know you are probably thinking "Good luck with that! I won't be joining you as I would like to eat my food." But not so fast, because I too would like to eat my food. This cleanse is not your typical cleanse where you just drink juice all day everyday, but is rather an addition to normal routine (though I am a raw till 4 vegan anyway, so basically I will just drink juice until dinner because I'm happy to do that).
The other day I spent some time at one of my favorite little evening getaways: Barnes and Noble, reading The Rainbow Juice Cleanse. While I don't agree with everything she talks about in the book such as you shouldn't eat too much fruit because it is very sugary, I do value a lot of the information talked about in the book. There is a good explanation about how different colors of foods have different vitamins and benefit us in different ways. It also got be thinking about my vegetables and how little variety I eat in raw form. In addition to this book I watched a documentary called Raw Food National Geographic Documentary which goes through a period of 28 days with 20 something people who all have health problems. During these 28 days they drink nothing but juice and by the end they are off their medication, they have lost weight, their appearance improves, and they feel better. And while I already experience great health because of my vegan lifestyle and exercise, I know that I can improve it even more (especially during the holidays) by drinking some good ol fruit and veggie juices!
It is amazing to think that the American lifestyle can be greatly improved if people would simply drink some freshly juiced fruit and vegetables everyday (and cut out a few things too).The juices pictured to the right are all the ones I made today. Yesterday I had basically the same thing, but with a little bit of variation. There is no magic mixture or necessary combinations, and the great thing about juicing this way is that you can just build the recipe by just grabbing things of a particular color and throwing them into your juicer-wala! Also, I know that I am missing blue/violet, but my pantry was lacking those colors (whoops).
As of day two I am feeling great and am surprised at how much more filling vegetable juices are than fruit juices. I drink one every couple of hours and it seems to stick with me! Here are the recipes for the juices pictured right:
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Red Juice
1 red beet
1/2 bunch of red radishes
1/4 of a medium red cabbage
8 red mini sweet peppers
2 red apples
Orange Juice
5 clementines
1 persimmon
1 bag of baby carrots (just because that's what I had)
8 orange mini sweet peppers
Yellow Juice
1 inch of ginger
8 yellow mini sweet peppers
Pineapple (I cheated today and used pineapple juice from a carton because I didn't have real pineapple, but definitely use a real one because it will still have all its vitamins.)
Green Juice
1/2 of large fennel bulb (including stem and leaves)
1 green bell pepper
1/4 green cabbage
2 kiwi's
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