Pretty purple power vegetable juice

Folks who have browsed my other blog, leafandgrain.com, know that I love freshly pressed vegetable juice.

Love it love it love it. I don’t know how it happens, but a vegetable juice blend is somehow more than the sum of its parts. It’s far more delicious than if you were to, say, stuff the same vegetables in your mouth all at once and bite down: kale, spinach, beets, pomegranates, grapes, lemons, and apples just don’t seem like they should harmonize into anything any remotely palatable. But they do. They really do.

And, thanks to the maddeningly stains-everything-it-touches beet juice, it’s just plain pretty, too. Green-green drinks turn some folks off, but this purple concoction is entirely approachable. Even for carnivores!

Now, I really don’t want to get into the whole juicing vs. smoothies war in this post. It’s moot in my household: I like both; I prefer juice. I still consume plenty of whole vegetables — daily — with their fiber intact. I don’t recommend that anyone do a juice fast (or refrain from doing a juice fast, for that matter — I don’t believe that short duration juice fasts are harmful), or limit their vegetable intake to only juice form. I *do* recommend balance and moderation in all things. ‘kay? ‘kay!

So, back to this pretty potion. My purple power vegetable juice is chock full of antioxidant-, phytonutrient- and vitamin C-rich fruits and veggies. And with cold and flu season coming on fast, we can use all the help we can get to keep our immune systems in tip-top shape.

Loaded with pomegranate seeds, red grapes, and apples, this drink is a tiny bit more fruit-heavy than my go-to green juice recipe, but for someone just dipping a toe into a vegetable strong diet, consider this your gateway drink.

See all that green in the second photo, above? You absolutely won’t taste it: the lovely red-red-red produce provides all of the flavor here. So, if you’re not a fan of beets, you might not like this. But then again, this drink might convince you to love beets. I know it did me!

Karen xo

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Pretty purple power vegetable juice

Author: Karen Gibson

Ingredients

• 1/2 small beet
• 1/4 cup pomegranate seeds
• dozen red grapes
• 5 to 6 kale leaves
• 1 heaping cup spinach leaves
• a couple of beet greens optional
• 1 rib celery
• 1 lemon
• 1 small apple
• 1 handful cilantro or flat-leaf parsley optional

Instructions

• Prepare your fruits and vegetables according to the instructions of your juicer brand (i.e., you might have to remove the lemon rind, and core your apple).
• Run the ingredients through the juicer. Drink, and enjoy.

Nutritional information, if shown, is provided as a courtesy only, and is not to be taken as medical information or advice. The nutritional values of your preparation of this recipe are impacted by several factors, including, but not limited to, the ingredient brands you use, any substitutions or measurement changes you make, and measuring accuracy.