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

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

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

002 Apple Basic

Backstory: In an attempt to delve into The Book I decided to take a baby step seeing as I had access to both carrots and a lot of apples in the house. I thought about making just apple juice but wanted the benefit of the carrots.
One of

Initial Thoughts Before Tasting: I don't mind carrot juice anymore. I know it's slightly sweeter with apples so this increased ration of apples to carrots (than I'm used to) shouldn't be too bad.

Ingredients:
3 apples
2 carrots

Thoughts After Tasting: Quite good. I like the variation.

Natalie Writes:

"This delicious but simple combination is a good way to introduce carrot to your juice repertoire if you're not used to vegetable juices."

Couldn't agree more.

Cleaning: The Apple didn't juice as nicely as the carrot normally does. I left the skin on but cored the apples. During juicing I opened the juicer a few times to take out larger pieces of apple to put them through again.

Star Rating: 4/5

129 What's Up Doc?

Backstory: The good ol' juice that started it all off.

Initial Thoughts Before Tasting: I hope this stuff really does start to clear up my skin and give me that energy it's supposed to. I never paid attention to that before so I'm keeping my eye out for that.

Ingredients:
5 carrots

Thoughts After Tasting: Yum!

Natalie Writes:

"The original basic vegetable juice ... probably the most popular and palatable of all the solo vegetable juices."

Well, I know it tastes good, but what frightens me is the "most palatable" part. I'm a bit worried of all the other vegetables that will have to be juiced soon ...

Cleaning: As per usual, carrots leave behind a lot of de-juiced remains. Strangely enough, it reminds me of a dry sponge.

Star Rating: 4/5