Juice Boost

Since Monday, I've been doing the Kaeng Raeng detox, which is basically three smoothies a day, plus all the raw fruits and veggies you want. I'll be posting a full review of the cleanse tomorrow when it's all over.

But throughout this three-day cleanse, I'm also enjoying lots of fresh juices. They're not required on the Kaeng Raeng detox, but I figured if I'm cleansing, why not? Plus, it's a great excuse to review Juice Boost: Juices, Smoothies, and Boosters for Supercharged Health by Chris Fung.

I've been looking for a good juicing book for years. I love my Jack Lalanne juicer, but I tend to fall into ruts, making the same tired old juices over and over. Most of my juicing books are from the 70s or 80s and contain way too much stuff to read. I want recipes, not narrative!

And Juice Boost delivers just that. There is a small section on the health benefits of juicing, but it's cleverly designed with lots of charts to keep things visually appealing. The rest of the full-color, photo-heavy book is recipes for juices, smoothies, and boosters (info on healthy add-ins, like spirulina, ginseng, or aloe vera).

Since my detox requires me to drink three smoothies a day (and they're made from pre-packaged powders), I opted to mix things up with juices from this book. Yesterday, I tried the Veggie Invigorator Juice:

Tomatoes, celery, carrots, ginger, and lemon. I love veggie juices the most, and this one was perfect. Like a really healthy V8 minus all that sodium. I love that Juice Boost tells you which nutrients play the largest role in each juice. This one is loaded with B vitamins, beta carotene, magnesium, manganese, and phosphate.

Today, I made the Apple Strawberry Cooler, so I could try something fruity:

This is made from apples, strawberries, and coconut water. You juice the apples in a juicer, but then that juice in blended in a blender with the fresh strawberries and coconut water. I loved how the coconut water gave this juice a cool, refreshing flavor. This would be perfect on a hot summer day. Unfortunately, today was stupid cold again. But I sipped on this and pretended I was at the beach. But if I was really on the beach, I'd probably spike it with some coconut rum.

There are so many more juices and smoothies I want to try from this book! The full-color, glossy pictures on nearly every page make me want to make everything! I'll definitely be using the smoothie recipes to jazz up my bi-weekly Vega smoothies.