I have to start out by saying that I hate V8 juice. I've never been able to stomach it because it always tasted to me like tinned tomato soup that was doused in salt in order to cover up the metallic taste. Not unlike canned tomato soup. It wasn't until I had a Bloody Mary at Etta's in Seattle a number of years ago that I realized that tomato juice could possibly taste decent, if not good.With my new juicer, I decided to branch out and make my own vegetable juice. I dutifully went to the store, after checking out some online recipes, and ended up concocting my own combination of ingredients (all organic) based on what was available and not exorbitantly expensive. Since we are nowhere near tomato season, organic tomatoes were something like $5 a pound, with the Roma's a few dollars cheaper per pound.
What this means is that my V8 juice wasn't exactly heavy on the tomatoes, but I made up for it with other ingredients. I didn't exactly decide how much of one thing over another went into it, I just grabbed what I felt like throwing in there from the fridge:
Random V8 Juice Recipe
Roma tomatoes
celery
green bell pepper
carrots
lettuce
onion
flat leaf parsley
Okay, you caught me, it's more like V7 juice. But, since I added the following, I'm calling it whatever I please:
garlic powder
salt
fresh ground pepper
hot sauce
I juiced the vegetables, then added the garlic powder, salt, pepper and hot sauce to taste. It was phenomenally good, except it was a lot more filling than I anticipated and wouldn't pour myself a tanker of it next time.
Because of the high cost of tomatoes, I probably won't be making this very often, but I can't wait for summer so I can start cranking these out like crazy.
Note: Argh! There be affiliate links in this post. Consider yerself warned.
11 comments:
When you juice it, are you juicing it in a blender? Because that would still keep the fiber in, if you do that, right?
Ruchi - I'm using the juicer that I link to in the post. You definitely do not want to use a blender.
@Ruchi: you raise a really interesting point! I've gotten back into juicing again pretty heavily the past two months, but have been regretting loss of the fibrous bulk of the juiced ingredients to my compost pile.
From now on, I shall try *blending* most of the ingredients and only running the most string-ily fibrous ingredients (ginger root? celery?) through the juicer proper.
"Blending Juicing-smoothily"? The whole juicing / blending / smoothy trichotomy is terribly arbitrary after all, no?
And why should my compost pile enjoy some of the best dietary components instead of moi? :):)
Sounds like something my husband would love-- I'll have to try it out!
I have always had a major love on for all things tomato but have to agree V8 juice always tasted "off" to me as well. Bad memories of that drink has definitely contributed to me not trying juicing in the past. Your review has now given me hope for the homemade kind. Going to have to give your recipe a whirl. : )
A good way to ease yourself into juicing vegetables is to start with a vege / fruit mix - a bit of apple or pineapple to add sweetness is a good idea to get used to it. Then you can reduce the fruit and increase the veges. Personally tomato will never be present in my juice - it makes me throw up.
Ooooh. Can't believe I have a juicer and never thought to try this. Thanks for this!
This is the second post about juicing in my RSS feed today! It seems you guys must know something I don't :)
Jessica
wow, just think of all the lovely anti-oxidants coursing through your blood. You're right about V-8...I'm addicted to the salt, but trying to eat better, so when current supply runs out, that's it.
You could probably also use canned tomatoes for juicing. At the end of tomato season we bought a bushel or two of tomatoes from a local farmer and canned them all so we have a lot of tomatoes on hand. Good idea what I can do with some though I'm not all that partial to tomato juice. I particularly like apple-carrot-kale for a juicing combo.
I 'rescued' a half-dozen distressed tomato and pepper plants from the TSC display (they didn't bother watering, and set the rack outside in the sun). I picked them up when they marked the $3-$4 plants down to 25 cents. Really stressed.
Then I panicked. On reading about the tomato blight (from commercial greenhouses), I was afraid to plant the suckers. I set them on trays on the kitchen window. They are still there.
The tomatoes did nothing. (I don't have enough bees in the kitchen, apparently. Sue me.) The pepper plants grew, and set fruit. The peppers, though, stayed small, about 1/4 as tall as regular bell peppers. I repotted all the plants with a compost mixture in their original plastic pots, maybe a bit smaller than a pint.
The plants stopped growing and taking water vigorously back in August, and before I knew it - started dropping leaves from water-logged (i.e., rotted) roots. Thinking to eak out a couple of weeks to leave those last, lingering peppers on them, I babied them on. They look horrible - but I still have two red and one (really short) green peppers in the kitchen window.
The heart out of a stalk of celery will grow roots in a glass of water, and grow in a window box. Celery actually turns out to be somewhat aromatic, and will have the living room smelling of celery. (Hey, there are worse smells!)
Keeping a few veggies going inside, or growing veggies, can make use of a spare window and a few moments. And you can skip the celery, if you don't find that a comforting aroma in the living room.
I promise to dump the sad straggling peppers before . . um, . . before TSC lets next season's starter plants get too distressed! Yeah, I think I can promise that!
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