102 Blue Pear

Backstory: Just bought pears and wanted to make something with them.

Initial Thoughts Before Tasting: Should be really tasty

Ingredients:
2 pears
1 handful blueberries
1 handful blackberries

Thoughts After Tasting: Juice was really thick - more like a smoothie. Probably because I used frozen blue and black berries that I thawed. Perhaps that changed the consistency. Otherwise really sweet and yummy. Added a bit of mineral water to take it down but it didn't mix too well. I think maybe adding more pears would help because the 2 that I did juice were very frothy and didn't provide much juice. I was also surprised because more of the recipes create about 500 mL of juice but this only created about half.

Natalie Writes:

"The sweetness of all three of these fruits is divine."

I have to agree.

Cleaning: Pretty quick without much pulp.

Star Rating: 4/5

336 Black & Apple Freezie

Backstory: Time to make another juice. Recently bought a pineapple and was hoping to use it but settled on a quencher that would let me sample something with the frozen blackberries in the freezer.

Initial Thoughts Before Tasting: A bit of vanilla essence will be interesting.

Ingredients:
4 handfuls frozen blackberries
2 tablespoons natural yogurt
1/2 teaspoon vanilla essence (used vanilla extract)
a few dashes apple juice (used somewhere between 1 and 1 1/2 cups of apple juice because the frozen blackberries create too thick a mixture and wouldn't blend)

Thoughts After Tasting: Tasty but I can't really pick up on the vanilla. Possibly too many blackberries overwhelmed the mixture. I'm not in a hurry to make this again.

Natalie Writes:

"a smooth vanilla undertone"

I wouldn't call the drink mixture and the vanilla undertone certainly didn't appear. Though I could see this having more potential if the ingredient amounts were played around with.

Cleaning: Pretty simple and quick wash of the blender. However, I'm concerned about the motor/blades as it seemed to get stuck a few times with the thick mixture of the frozen blackberries.

Star Rating: 2/5

284 Creamy Pink Banana

Backstory: Bought a lot of fresh strawberries on sale.

Initial Thoughts Before Tasting: Time to venture into smoothies!

Ingredients:
1 banana
2 handfuls of strawberries
5 tablespoons natural yogurt
8 tablespoons apple juice

Thoughts After Tasting: Yum! My whole family enjoyed this one. I like smoothies to be a bit runny and so added a bit more juice (from a freshly juiced apple) and a bit less of the yogurt.

Natalie Writes:

..."best in the summer..."

It's a pretty chill day today at 16 degrees C and because all the ingredients (except for the yogurt) were at room temperature, the smoothie was rather warm. Thought it would be amazing in the summer if it was chilled. Even better might be if it could be frozen and made into popsicles.

Cleaning: Quick and easy. The juicer only had 1 apple go through and the blender was a quick rinse.

Star Rating: 4/5

141 Cold War

Backstory: After the Apple Cleanser my throat started to hurt. I assumed it was of those wonderful detox properties inherent to cleanses. In addition to having a few friends who do various other detoxes, I've done the Master Cleanse for a few days in the past and have read up a lot on juice fasts: one common occurrence is for people to experience headaches and a general sense of pseudo-illness as the toxins are being released from the body. The sore throat, I thought nothing of it. The next day it was still around and this morning I woke up sounding not my best with what felt suspiciously like dripping sinuses.
I had thought of doing a fun juice with all my ingredients possibly something with the pineapple (though two of my oranges were eaten already along with who knows what else). Instead I look to the index to see what's good for a cold. I end up on Cold War as I have the ingredients and it sounds pretty good.

Initial Thoughts Before Tasting: I love oranges, I love carrot juice and I often eat garlic when I'm sick and have learned to enjoy it. Usually sliced up cloves on a bread slathered with butter: it's one of those things I love to hate but I really love it in this masochistic way.

Ingredients:
4 carrots
1 orange (I peeled it and juiced it with the pith instead of the squeezing method)
1/2 inch (1 cm) ginger root
2 cloves garlic

Thoughts After Tasting: O_o
The smell of the ginger and garlic was a bit overwhelming at first. It's taking me a bit of time to get through one glass and I still have another waiting for me. It seems to taste better as time goes on; that or my taste buds are not taking note of them anymore and the orange is coming through a bit. Not very frothy which is nice. I think I'll stick to making this juice when I'm sick.

Natalie Writes:

"If your chest is feeling congested, you could add half an onion."

I didn't. I'm glad I made that choice. Perhaps in the future I might do that. Thankfully my chest isn't really congested and I fear the onion would have been a bit too much for a first go with this.

Cleaning: Nothing really to note. The filter seemed a bit more clogged (possibly the ginger or garlic?) though the rest was especially easy to clean and there was not much leftover pulp.

Star Rating: 3/5

Notes: Pulp/Froth settles on the bottom very THICK toward the bottom of the glass.

012 Apple Cleanser

Backstory: After a trip to the grocery store and picking up ingredients for a few juices that looked interesting, I was left with the choice of what I wanted to actually make. I realized the most of the juices I now had ingredients for were rather challenging. The few things I wasn't able to pick up (guava and papaya being out of season) meant that I had the kale and beets to work with.

Initial Thoughts Before Tasting: I hope I can manage to down everything :/

Ingredients:
2 apples
2 kale leaves
1 stick celery
1/3 long cucumber
1/2 beet (beetroot)

Thoughts After Tasting: WOW. There is a hint of something that I can't place, possibly the kale or the cucumber or even the celery but there was something enticing about the juice. Once it settled a little for a moment I thought I was drinking blueberries mixed in until I remembered what I had put in there.

Natalie Writes:

"The fruitiness of the apples offsets the more challenging taste of the greens ..."

Perhaps it was the "challenging" taste that I really enjoyed as I couldn't really taste the apples very much.

Cleaning: While making the juice it was bright (think nuclear) green with a layer of red after the beets and more green when I finished up the kale and celery. I was expecting the cleaning would be bad. (Note: the juice turned a dark burgundy once I mixed it up and the amazing green disappeared.)
● There wasn't much pulp left over though skin from the cucumber and some other bits (such as that celery again) seemed to be almost whole. Overall a pretty good yield of juice ratio to pulp.
● Quick wash for the main parts but the blade/sieve required a bit more care. I think it was some celery that got a bit too attached. Also some green fuzz was resistant (probably celery again) around the corners where the sieve meets the plastic.

Star Rating: 4/5

131 Capple Basic

Backstory: I was going to make this and try it side by side with 132 - Orange Carrot but the orange in the kitchen went bad on the inside so it was just a double batch of Capple Basic instead.

Initial Thoughts Before Tasting: Probably won't taste all that different seeing as my parents used to toss in an apple or two when they made carrot juice.

Ingredients:
4 carrots
1 apple

Thoughts After Tasting: The apple tones down the carrot quite nicely and adds a bit of interest to a basic carrot juice. Supposedly really good for energy and I found that I wasn't very hungry after as an added bonus. Tastes inverse to the 002 Apple Basic which I prefered but like this version for the positive effects of carrot on skin. Though I wonder how the star system was created because 129 What's Up Doc? doesn't differ by much (minus 1 carrot and plus one apple) and yet 129 is given 5 stars for skin while this juice, 131 is given 3. The only conclusion I can come up with is that the stars needed to be scaled down to compensate for the increased energy of 5 stars for the Capple Basic.

Natalie Writes:

"... good, basic standby for any morning."

I guess I agree. I'm kind of neutral on this one.

Cleaning: Again, quite a few apple skins and pieces got trapped in the top so the space used for collecting the de-juiced ingredients wasn't used effectively. Standard to clean.

Star Rating: 4/5

026 Parsnapple

Backstory: I didn't make it into the grocery store to pick up ingredients for some juices that sparked my interest so at home, after pulling out some more carrots and apples to make the Apple Basic again I noticed there was some liquid spilled in my fridge. I had to take everything out of the crisper in order to wash and wipe it down and this led me to an inventory of the veggies that were in there. I was actually enthralled to see 2 large bags of carrots my parents must have bought recently after seeing my invigorated approach to juicing; a variety of standard things like garlic and lemons was also in there along with a bag of parsnips. I figured with this bounty I wasn't going to settle for some basic carrot juice, oh no! Yet after checking the handy indexes in the back by ingredient I found that most of the juices (that looked appealing; note - not the parsnip) required some other third or fourth ingredient I didn't have.
After getting it into my mind that I wanted to try something different I couldn't deny what was in front of me:
a bag of wet parsnips that I would have to find another bag for anyway
and
it couldn't really be that bad, right?

Initial Thoughts Before Tasting: Parsnips! EEK. Knowing me, this is going to be my knack of picking the worst tasting thing in The Book. actually can't recall eating a parsnip aside from them being one of those veggies I avoid in soup.

Ingredients:
3 apples
2 parsnips
sprinkling of grated nutmeg

Thoughts After Tasting: Expecting the worst, I was unimaginably satisfied. Toned the apples down, which I usually find tart on their own. I could see this becoming a regular juice especially as a refreshing drink in the summer. Kind of reminds me of a piña colada with the froth and colouring.
Though it left a parsnip-y aftertaste that I didn't notice for a while. Not enough to discourage me from drinking this one again.

Natalie Writes:

"I certainly turned my nose up when I first heard of the concept of juicing a parsnip, but actually, it's deliciously sweet."

Check and check.

"Blend it with a sharp apple variety."

I took what was in the fruit basket, not my favourite apple to eat: 3 of those red and green ones that are white and tart (with missing labels.)

"You can leave out the nutmeg if you don't feel like shaking it all up, otherwise it'll just sit on top."

I didn't want to bother with the nutmeg. Figured I'd taste my first parsnip related juice as it comes out of the juicer.

Cleaning: It was surprisingly easy to clean/wash the juicer. Much easier than carrot. I didn't expect that at all.

Star Rating: 3/5

Notes: I left a glass of it in the fridge to let one of my parents taste it but I decided to take my vitamins with it later. It was a bit too ... thick after. Perhaps it would have been better had I allowed it to attain room temperature. The only thought I really had was that didn't want to drink a cold juice again. If possible, fresh only.