On the heels of signing a year-long gym contract, I pressed myself a couple of fresh “get the ass in the pants” juices last night.
Grapefruit/orange/apple has been my go-to for a couple of weeks now. I almost consider it a treat more than the vitamin rich liquid gold that it is. The first time around, I followed a basic recipe that I’d found online and pressed grapefruit and a single apple. Not being used to the bitter bite of the grapefruit, it was rough. A few days later, I tried a “what’s in the fridge?” concoction of grapefruit, apples, strawberries and blueberries. Let me tell you, sweet is not the way to go with this one. Suck it up and learn to love the flavor of grapefruit. Not only is it incredibly good for you and your waistline, my grandpa used to eat those suckers plain for breakfast. Everyday. In the cold. Uphill both ways. You need to try harder.
Now, I’m just freaking proud to have tackled Juice #2. I’ve tried greens before – kale, spinach, cucumbers, kiwis – it wasn’t pretty. After failing to gag down half a bottle of what I’d made, I quickly discovered that I couldn’t even think of cucumbers without feeling sick. Trying another green juice has been at the bottom of my list of to-dos for about 4 months. My strategy has been similar to that of feeding vegetables to toddlers when force doesn’t work: put them on the plate, someday they’ll give in. So I’ve been buying green produce for the past 4 months. Eating most of it, not juicing any of it. I was shocked to find myself even considering this ridiculous science experiment again last night. I was even more amazed when I was able to drink an entire 12 ounces for breakfast today. Knowing cucumbers weren’t my best friends, I created my own twist on the Power Gulp recipe. It still has that green taste, but for me it seemed much lighter than what I’ve tried in the past. It looks something like this:
3 large kale leaves
1/2 cucumber
1 cup (plus a few extra) green seedless grapes
1 granny smith apple
1 small lemon
That magical image up there was ninja’d from health.com. I’m hoping a sorry attempt at photo credit will inspire their forgiveness. My drink didn’t look nearly this pretty, nor was I inspired to take a picture.