Food and Mood and Juice

I am always interested in how food affects my mood and wellbeing. Recently a friend gave me an old juicer that she didn’t need any more. This is where the fun began. It was brilliant working out which combinations of fruit and veg worked together but here are two recipes that I really liked:
Apple, Cucumber, Mint, Orange and Melon.
Carrot, Celery, Ginger and Beetroot.
But you can make up any combination you like. Experimenting is half the fun and most fruit and vegetables juice really well.

The benefit of drinking all the raw, fresh goodness is that it makes me feel very energised and positive, and seems to be a healthy way of combating the heavy feeling I sometimes get from my medication.

Some tips:
It can take quite a lot of fruit and veg to get a good glass of juice, so save money by looking out for ‘just over’ discounted stuff in greengrocers and supermarkets.
Carrots are very cheap; use them to bulk up any juice.
Add herbs and spices to make the flavour even more zingy.

Use the pulp; juicing creates a lot of leftover pulp and although this makes good compost there are lots of ways you can use the pulp.
Pulped veg. added to a can of drained red beans or butter beans then mushed up and spiced up makes a very good veggie burger. (You might have to sit the veg pulp on kitchen towel for an hour beforehand to dry it out a bit, or leave it to drip in a sieve.)
Fruit pulp tastes delicious when set in a strawberry or lemon jelly, or dolloped on to breakfast cereal with a bit of yogurt. Try using it to flavour plain yogurt.

We did try making soup out of the veg pulp, but it wasn’t all that good. I’d be interested to know if anyone has any good recipes for this.

Caribbean Turkey Soup
2nd July 2015