I love juices, but I do not advocate long-term juicing or extreme juice fast since juicing might throw off your blood sugar balance. Juices are perfect if you need to detoxify or alkalize your body, but I do not believe that it is healthy to stay on a purely liquid diet for a long period of time.
I schedule short juice "marathons" that never last more than one week, and I do it when the seasons change or after I spent some time in places where eating raw food was neither safe nor possible.
As anyone who eats highly or mostly raw food, I invested good money in a powerful juicer. This is the first step to saving money. Better juicers extract more juice from fruit and vegetable. And they last longer! My Gasroback juicer came with a 35-year warranty.
Yet, no matter how strong the juicer, everyone who has ever made juice at home is confronted with a painful dilemma. The leftover pulp that stays back after juicing is definitely not a fiction.
When I started making juices many years ago I did not give it much thought. I threw away the pulp and cleaned my juicer. After some time juicing became a little too expensive. I also realized that I was throwing good food away. All the unused nutrients, all the fiber. I decided to juice a bit less in order to waste less.
As my juicer was gathering dust on the kitchen counter, I was creating countless raw food recipes. It was then that some ideas popped up. I bought a few pounds of organic carrots, made delicious juice, and started working with the carrot pulp. I created a few amazing raw recipes, and also used the pulp to cook spicy carrot ginger coconut soup. I went back to juicing more often and reused as much fruit and vegetable pulp as it was only possible. And what could not be re-used went into the compost.
Over time I gathered recipes that were made purely out of the juice "refuse." To make it easier to collect the pulp I place a large, freezer-safe plastic bag into the pulp container. This not only saves some work as I do not need to clean so much, I am also able to store the pulp in the freezer if I did not have the time to work with the pulp right away.
Five ways to re-use the vegetable pulp:
- make raw crackers or raw bread
- make savory bread spread
- make a soup - raw or cooked
- add to dips, salad dressings and sauces
- dehydrate and blend to make raw seasoning
- make raw or cooked vegan burgers
- make no-meat loaf
Five ways to re-use the fruit pulp:
- make raw ice cream
- make raw jam
- make smoothies
- make energy bars
- make raw cakes and desserts
- use in baking
- dehydrate and blend into a superfood powder
Both, fruit and vegetable pulp can be frozen and stored in the freezer for quite some time. I often make ice cubes that I use in smoothies. This is a very simple and time saving way. Before you make the ice cube remove all though parts from the fruit or vegetable pulp. You can whiz it in a food processor or a power blender to make sure that it is smooth and homogeneous. Add sufficient amount of coconut water and pour the mixture into ice cube trays. Freeze and keep ready for you next smoothie. Use instead of ice cubes.
I can imagine that there are many more uses of the raw fruit and vegetable pulp, but the ten ways listed above helped me save a lot of money while juicing and added a new gustatory experience.
Fruit and vegetable pulp is quite versatile. You can add herbs and spices to make the final product taste really good. Add nuts and seeds. Use blender, food processor, or the dehydrator. Experiment. It is such a fun!
And one last thing, remember to wash your juicer after each use. This will help you not only to keep your juicer clean and your juices tasty, but it will also prolong the life of your juicer. Once you have invested in a good tool you want it to last as long as possible.
In radiant health, passionately raw - Dominique
Money-saving, frugal juice pulp recipes here
How to Save Money with Juicing by Dominique Allmon is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.