Alright, this is John Kohler with growingyourgreens.com. Today it's a beautiful April day, and I have
a special treat for you. A question I get a lot is, 'John, how do you use all that food
that you're growing, and what do you do with it all?' you know, 'make some recipes for
us.' Alright, today I'm going to show you one of the primary ways actually I use a lot
of my greens and things I grow here. I make fresh juices. So, fresh vegetables juices
primarily. So, what we're going to do is walk around the yard today, walk around my garden
today and we're going to pick some produce and then we're going to juice it for you.
So, let's see. Right now we're coming out of the winter garden and right now I like
to use all my Bok choi. The Bok choi is actually one of the staples or one of the main components
of my juice right now, and that's mainly because of the stalks. Bok choi stalks are basically
greats sources of liquid. So, I'm harvesting one here. So, yea, these stalks are amazing.
They're, you know, nice and they're really good and in juice they make a nice real good
juice and also the greens contain a lot of chlorophyll. So, let's go ahead and pick a
couple of these leaves here. So, if you're not growing Bok choi you could also use celery
as a base to the juice, and in summer time I'll often like to use cucumbers as a base.
So, celery, Bok choi, or cucumbers are used in a base. You could also use carrots as well.
My carrots are really small right now, and Bok choi's a lot easier to grow because it's
much faster. Alright, so here's my greens bed. In my greens bed I have things like kale,
collards, cauliflower, broccoli and chard growing, and different varieties, and one
of my favorite things to juice us the greens and that; show you could really use greens
a lot faster than you could normally eat them. So, I think of a juice as a, you know, produce
multiplier, producer consumption multiplier basically it let's you eat more fresh fruits
and vegetables and how many of you have eaten your 5-9 servings a day? I know I get my 5-9
servings every single day thanks to my garden here, but so, juicing and using the greens
in your juice allow you to basically take more of this good stuff, because there's a
lot of fiber and some people don't like the taste, you know, of eating straight greens.
I mean some of my baby greens, I like picking the baby greens for my salad, and I mean,
this stuff tastes sweeter than lettuce to me and actually I prefer it over lettuce.
It's a lot more nutrient dense as well. So, let's go back and pick one of these big leaves
and one of the question is, you know, 'John, what do I juice?' You know, I come down and
I pick off the leaves near the bottom, and these are some of the biggest leaves and these
are the leaves that I juice and the reason for that is number one is because, you know,
hen you cut a leaf off, you know, now the plants going to be like, 'oh, I got a leaf
cut. I better put more energy into growing.' That's one reason. The other reason is, you
know, what the heck are you going to do with these leaves anyway? The bigger leaves tend
to have more fibrous, and, you know, so the smaller leaves are good for eating out of
hand, eating fresh. I guess if you did cook them, you know, the cooking process would
break down the fibers, but I want to eat foods that are rich in enzymes and once you cook
your foods, they're devoid of enzymes and as we know also, the nutrition goes down.
So, by juicing your big leaves you're going to basically break up the fiber, get all the
liquid. You know, it's the juice of the fiber that feeds you. The juice is, you know, the
nutrients of the plant except for the fiber, and when we take it away and separate it form
the fiber, then it's a lot easier for our body to absorb. Imagine that big thanksgiving
dinner you had last thanksgiving, you know, and you usually after the big thanksgiving
dinner you kind of get tired, you now, and you want to go to sleep, and that's because,
you know, our body takes energy to extract the energy our of the foods we eat and thanksgiving
dinner is probably the extreme example of taking the most energy because we're filling
up on turkey and, you know, pie, pumpkin pies, and all kinds of stuff and usually people
probably overeat a little a little bit, too, but then you feel tired afterwards, and opposite
end of the spectrum, juice is the easiest, one of the easiest foods to digest, and it's
one of the easiest foods for you to eat that you're body can easily get the energy out
of. So, it's almost like, you know, you drink the juice and then you have instant energy
and you don't get tired, because, you know, it's just instant energy your body can extract
the energy out of. Let's go ahead, and I'm going t pick a couple more greens and we'll
be juicing these up in just one moment. Juicing is another way to actually use some of your,
you know, damaged leaves. So, this has some damage around the edge, so I'm just pulling
this edge. We're going t compost the bad parts. You now what? Now we're going to juice the
good parts, and the stalk is actually a really good part to juice, so that's how I use a
lot of the produce that have major big bug holes or, you know, damage but some it is
still good. They're excellent to juice. Alright, so dino kale is one of my favorite kales and
look at this nice long kale, dino or lacticino kale. Kale is actually one of the most nutritious
foods on earth. Probably the second in my book of, you know, pants of vegetables on
earth. The first is actually being Egyptian spinach, but kale is definitely good to juice,
really rich in nutrition, but, you know, how any people like eating their kale? So, juicing
is another way to slip it in and when we're going to juice we're going to juice with kale
and other things that you pretty much won't be able to taste the flavor of the kale. We're
going to doctor it up with some apples, which will give it some sweetness and some lemon,
which really adds flavor to the juice. Alright, so now I picked all the produce and now we're
going to juice the produce in one of my favorite juices, called the Omega Vert juicer. Really
easy to use. You're just going to go ahead and turn it on. We're going to take our beautiful
Bok choi and put it in to the juicer. Now, I've go tot give you the disclaimer here.
My real job, and actually people have always wondered about my real job, actually I sell
juicers for a living so that you can eat more fresh fruits and vegetables in your diet.
It think it's very important to eat a lot of fruits and vegetables, because definitely
most people don't eat enough, and we have a society full of overweight people who aren't
eating their fruits and vegetables and I bet if everybody ate their fruits and vegetables
and whole foods and minimally processed foods, you know, we as a nation would be a lot healthier.
So, that's some Bok choi. Now, when you're juicing the carrots, I just dug these carrots
up, when you're juicing the carrots, you want to remove the top. You can juice the carrots
but not the tops. On the beet greens, you can juice actually the beet greens. So, here's
that beautiful dino kale or lacticino kale, going into the juicer. Now, green juices is
where it's at. You really want to juice your dark leafy greens because most people don't
eat enough. Now, lemons. Lemons are great to juice. They add a nice lemon flavor to
the juice, and you could also, you know, put the skin in with your lemons as long as it
sides. Just dump that in there and it'll juice, skin and all. Check out this nice heirloom
yellow carrot, and I encourage people to juice a wide variety of colors in their juice, whether
it's yellow carrots or whatever, and growing heirloom things. Throw that in there. Another
little small carrot here, and there's a beet that I just dug up. Really nice beet there.
Now, it's really important when you're juicing beets, you know, be cautious, because if you
juice too many beets, one time I thought I would be cool and drank straight beet juice,
and guess what? About a half hour later, I threw it all up because beet juice can be
very detoxifying if you're not used to it. So, use only a little bit of beet. So, my
generally guideline is, you know, ¾ of your juice should be a nice rich watery green.
S, by that I mean something like Bok choi or celery or cucumbers or even like lettuce.
Lettuce could be a nice ¾ of your glass of juice, or even carrots could also be really
well because they're pretty neutral, and then ¾ of you glass is one of those tings and
then the last ¼ could be basically the dark leafy greens. SO, like the kale and collards,
the broccoli leaves, and other things that are a little bit strong. Go ahead and use
the pusher to push that in. Here goes the apple. One of the things I didn't grow. I
have 2 apple trees but they haven't been producing and we'll just go ahead and put the apple
in there, and check out this leaf. This is a cool leaf. Now to feed it into the juicer
the best things I've found is that if you just take it ant you roll it up, it's going
to work a lot better. I'll feed the leaf in first. Look at that. What a way to use your
greens. So, as you can see, I mean, leaves go really fast, an they don't create a lot
of juice, so you need a lot of leaves to make just a little bit of juice. Alright, even
things like spinach. This fresh picked spinach, definitely Popeye would approve, and don't
forget about you herbs. So, some people would consider parsley and herb. I consider it a
vegetable, and parsley's excellent to juice. Really nutritious. One of my favorites. I'm
going to put that in the juicer, and, you know, I do want to mention there are different
kinds of juicers out here, and, you know, some juicers are better at juicing some things
than others. So, you know, if you saw the Jack Loraine commercial on TV, that's style
of juicer is called the centripetal ejection style of juicer, and that style of juicer's
good fro juicing like apples and carrots and lemons and harder things, but it really sucks
and it's not good at juicing leafy greens, which is what I think we should be juicing
the most of. So, leafy greens have a special texture when you juice them in the centripetal
ejection. Basically it'll shred it and then kick out whole chunks of leaves without getting
them juiced, whereas this is called the single auger style of juicer, and it's much more
efficient at juicing the leafy greens. So, it's a much higher yield so you're not going
to waste as much produce As you can see here, this pulp coming out, this is just some green
juice pulp, and its pretty dang fry. So, let's see, we're about full here on the juice coming
out. We're going to go ahead and turn the juicer off. Move that over there, and here's
my green juice. Let's see, and I'll stir it up, and, you know, all juicer won't create
a foam and you could either drink the foam or pour it off. Doesn't really matter. You
could use a sieve to strain it out or actually gravy separators another useful kitchen tool
that that'll work on. Fresh green juice. It's so good for you, and I encourage everybody
to eat more fresh fruits and vegetables. So, this is John Kohler with growingyourgreens.com.
Hope you've enjoyed this juicing recipe and one of the ways I use some of my produce.
We'll see you next time.