Spring Wake Up

It's officially spring according to the calendar. The weather is getting there, albeit slower than I'd prefer. Inside our tiny apartment it feels like summer. At least in our glasses, that is, because we finally got a juicer! And when better than a nice, long three day Seward's Day weekend to try it out?! Thank you, Mr. Seward for purchasing Alaska. I wasn't born here and I probably won't die here, but wherever I go, Alaska will forever be my home. But seeing as how my lovely state doesn't support my marrying my true love, we probably won't be calling Alaska home much longer. But enough of spring and politics, on to juice awesomeness!

Here's the juicer we decided on. It was a random deal on Amazon that I think is already gone. So sorry because the name brand versions of this retail for over $300. It's a slow speed, masticating juicer. The slow speed is supposed to be better for maintaining more of the nutrients in the juice by not heating up as much during the juicing process. I don't know how much of a difference this makes but sure, why not get the most out of the plants?

Our first attempt was celery, apple, orange, carrot, kale and mint. I love it, it tasted like the smell of summer, very green. K wasn't as enthused by it but she drank it down nonetheless. I was immediately drawn to the dry pulp leftovers and the possible uses for them. I used this recipe as a starting point for these crackers. For the spices I added coriander, cayenne, and organic no salt vegetable seasoning and a pinch of sea salt. The no salt seasoning is basically dehydrated veggies and super delish and available at Costco. Get some. I also added nutritional yeast to help bind and add a little tang.

I don't have a dehydrator, so I just set my oven as low as possible. I think I ended up leaving them in for about 5 hours and then I left them in overnight with the oven off. In the morning I had crisp-ish, super fibery crackers that tasted like tomato vegetable soup. Interesting and pretty tasty. The amount of celery fiber is a bit overwhelming, I would definitely reduce that next time.

For the next batch of juice I wanted to use the pulp for a sweet bread so I kept the ingredients to carrot, apple, orange and ginger and lemon. This juice was a big hit and I will definitely make this combo again. It's invigorating and just plain good.

As a gluten free, vegan, I don't get a lot of baked goodness in my life. It's truly sad. So I was determined to make myself something baked and sweet out of this juice pulp. I started with this recipe. I've used this recipe before and it works well with whatever you have on hand. The last bread I made was more savory sweet with black beans, squash and chipotle as the puree.

I used 1 1/4c of pulp as the puree and I added a smashed banana to add back some moisture. I used canned coconut milk because I had it on hand, although last time I used almond milk and that worked just as well. I only had brown sugar, so that's what I used. For the flours I had coconut and sweet rice. I also added 1t of cinnamon and about 1/2t of cloves. I ended up baking it for about 75 minutes. Then I decided that it needed frosting because damn it, I don't ever get frosting! Waaaay back on the top shelf of one of my cabinets is "normal baking staples" that I never use. One of which is a bag of confectioner's sugar. So I whisked together a healthy two cups of that plus about a 1/4c of the above carrot orange juice and 1t bourbon vanilla. I poured about half of it all over the top of the bread / cake and popped it back in the oven for about 10-15 more minutes. Thus creating a glazed doughnut crust that really just made the dessert incredible. Fucking incredible.

Some might say that it's not vegan due to the confectioner's sugar used and the possibility that bone char is used in filtering the sugar. I am more frugal than idealist and it was in my cabinet so I used it. And I realize that 100% vegan is unobtainable if you get too damn nitpicky. Do what you can, where you can and don't sweat the small stuff. For me it's vegan, for you it might not be, we'll both survive.

My next plan for the juicer is tomato kale juice with basil. And maybe another round of cracker experimentation with the resulting pulp. I'm also thinking about bumping up our Full Circle box to weekly delivery instead of our every other week current schedule. Or just more Costco runs :) Either way, the juicer now has a permanent home on our tiny counter and is going to get hopefully daily use.

And in non-juice news, I also chose this long weekend to quit smoking! Again! Guh. I've also recently broken my upwards of 4 cans a day diet coke habit. So if I can really (yes, I CAN) quit smoking I'll be down to almost no bad for me habits. And that's a great way to wake up to spring.