A good sized piece of ginger root will last a month, just keep it in the fridge wrapped in a bit of cellophane. In fact, it will last longer if all you use it for is juicing. All you need is a 1 inch piece for a juice session making 2 to 4 large juices. Ginger is potent and should always be added into the juice earlier rather than later. It will sit on the top of the finished juice if added too late. If juiced last, it will mostly end up staying in the juicer and never get into your juice. Some people are sensitive to ginger, so please test for taste and increase in small increments.
We also juice cabbages, kale, chard, and green lettuces and spinach. These we also rotate over the seasons depending on price, availability, and seasonality. Lettuce can get to $3 a head in deep winter, while kale and cabbages tend to be cheaper this time of year.
One cabbage, one Swiss chard or one kale or any two of any of the greens should be plenty for a week’s worth of juicing.
Parsley, cilantro, basil, fennel, arugula and mint all make excellent additions to fresh juices and the best way to determine which to use is to try them all a little bit at a time mixed in to your juices. We are huge fans of curly parsley in juices, both for the iron and for the taste. Parsley adds a really pleasant zing to a veggie juice and is particularly tasty with a little citrus in the mix.
Example of a Weekly Juicing Budget
So here is our weekly budget for juicing, to help you get an idea of what can be done at what price. Do remember that the best juice is one you actually make and drink, and all the beautiful fresh produce in the world will only go bad if you don’t stick to your plans and break out the juicer and make the juice. Because this is a new routine, it helps to set a plan and budget and stick to it for a couple of weeks or even months so that you develop the habit of juicing on a regular basis. Otherwise you may find your good intentions lead to lots of produce purchasing and not enough juicing; which will lead to a lot of wasted produce and bad feelings about not keeping up with your plan or your produce. And of course, the prices shown here represent a snapshot in time for our region.
Total weekly budget: $45.00
CSA’s and Farmers Markets – Another Big Budget Saver
A great way to save on fresh produce in season and to have a steady supply of excellent locally grown organic juicing materials is to shop through a local CSA or Farmers Market.
CSA’s are “Community Supported Agriculture” programs where local farms allow you to purchase an annual subscription based on a weekly cost and receive fresh produce each week during the growing season. Some CSA farms deliver; others have pick-up days for customers at the farm or at a convenient in-town location. Each farm handles their program slightly differently, so you’ll want to check around and choose the farm and program that works best for you.
Until very recently, CSA’s were not a very common option for most people throughout the U.S. and around the world. But that has changed dramatically in the last decade and in the last few years. CSA’s have exploded as farmers and consumers discover that direct relationships work well for everyone involved.
TIP: To find a local CSA in your area, the best resource is a web site called Local Harvest. You can find them at localharvest.org and they have a complete directory of local farms, CSA’s, Farmers Markets and even allow you to search by specific products you are looking for. They have a nationwide database search engine and it is very good.
Another way to find local CSAs is to look up local community food and farmers markets and speak with the people who run them and to the farmers who sell at the markets. Often local farms have a CSA and a farmers market program, so you can find a farm selling the produce you like at the farmers market and inquire if they run a CSA as well.
So don’t let anyone tell you that it is ‘too expensive to eat organic’. It is only too expensive if you insist on buying everything cello-wrapped at the local national chain store. And even then, if you shop wisely and in season, it is cheaper sometimes by half or more than it will be the rest of the year.
Learning how to move your purchasing power around with the seasons and varying your juicing and produce consumption over the course of the year can drastically reduce what you spend.
Selecting and Preparing Your Produce for Juicing
Produce Selection and Seasonality
As you get into the habit of juicing you will learn more and more about the nature of the produce you juice. You will learn that in different seasons and from different sources, produce tastes differently! Sometimes a certain vegetable will be incredibly sweet, sometimes more hot and pungent. Just as any experienced vegetable gardener knows, different temperatures, moisture and weather conditions directly affect the taste of the produce you grow. This does not change simply because you are buying your produce in the local shop or grocery store. A large part of produce selection is variable and has to do with seasons, climate and growing conditions.
For most of us, selecting produce at the grocery store seems a fairly predictable and mundane task, but that is simply because we are disconnected from the immediacy of the growing phenomenon. Selecting the best produce for juicing is highly dependent on season. Getting to learn the natural seasons of your produce will give you a big advantage when it comes to selecting the best juicing materials as you move through the seasons.
One of the most important and simple rules of juicing is to taste the produce you are juicing as you go! In our household we jokingly say “That’s eating the juicing material, isn’t it?!”, and the answer is always YES. Because if you do not taste it as it goes into the juicer you do not know what it will taste like coming OUT of the juicer. The answer is, it will always taste even more powerfully of whatever it tastes like going in. So a ‘hot’ cabbage or a sweet Kale will taste hot or sweet in the juice. Some seasons, kale is so sweet it is like candy, others it is so bitter it is like coffee. Knowing how it tastes going in helps you balance the juice so that it is delicious and palatable coming out of the juicer and into your glass.
There will be juices where you will look at your mate or friend or juicing partner and say “WOW that is AMAZING!” and there will be juices where you take one sip and say “Where is the apple/orange/lemon/yam/beet (fill in the blank) to make this juice drinkable!?!”
So, rule number one when preparing your juices, is to TASTE the produce you are juicing. A little nibble is all it takes to know – bitter? sweet? pleasant? super-astringent? Makes your hair stand up on end? It is completely worth the tiny effort it takes to nibble as you juice and it will pay you back in spades. Every once in a while you will nibble and say “YECH! P.U., ACK!” and because you will be in the midst of making a delicious juice, you will refrain from adding that YECH to your juice before it is too late and you have spoiled a perfectly lovely juice.
This is the reality of juicing. You cannot ‘taste test’ every piece of produce you buy, so you learn to taste test as you juice. It is so worth it. It will also teach you a valuable long term vocabulary of tastes in the produce world that will serve you well as you go on to develop your juicing regimen over the long term. No one says you have to juice any particular vegetable or fruit to be a successful juicer and if you determine that something doesn’t work for you then you can simply eliminate it early on and not have to worry about it.
That being said, the other thing you will discover over time is that your taste will change when it comes to juices and juicing. So every once in a while, go ahead and go back and experiment with that thing you decided was never going to be in your juice again – you may just surprise yourself.
Rule number two for selecting produce is to go organic when at all possible. This is particularly important for the produce on the infamous ‘dirty dozen’ list of most highly toxic from pesticides, which include quite a few of the most popularly juiced fruits and vegetables. Those familiar with produce will most likely know these, but just in case there is any question in your mind, here they are again: