Wednesday, March 7, 2012

NoPulpLeftBehind Bread

Juicing is fantastic. The amount of end product left behind is not, especially if you plan on tossing it in the garbage. It's a huge waste of nutrients and cold hard cash to throw away perfectly good juicing pulp.

If you've never used a Breville juicer, I'll tell you right now that though I adore the thing, the spent vegetables and fruit spinning out into the pulp collector are not hard, useless fiber rocks. Greens are challenging to juice because the spinning blades tend to juice a more solid item better (carrots and celery, for instance, fare better). Soft citrus fruits give out a lot of juice, but this kind of juicer isn't ideal for them and the juice comes out frothy, the pulp a ravaged but fairly intact moist fruit skin. But even the harder items have a slightly wet pulp, with plenty of vitamins and phytonutrients left amongst the fibrous remains.

Reusing the pulp has become a mission of mine. I love my spicy broth with kombu and cayenne. It fills you up and satisfies you, but let's be real here... you can only make (and drink) so much broth when you are juicing for two people two to three times a day! My dogs have adored the fruit & veggie pulp treats I've made them a few times, and we give them plenty of shredded carrots, beets, and greens with their dinner and they LOVE it. Still, a pile of pulp remains that has much goodness left within.

Last week, I decided to make loaf bread and muffins. We have carrot cake, zucchini bread, and banana loaf, so why not combine aspects from all three, along with my veganizing, oil free awesomeness? I had one banana left which was at the perfect stage of softness, so I mushed that up with just a couple tablespoons of raw honey. I soaked some chia seeds to serve as the binder. I gathered two heaping cups of the best pulp from the morning's juicing--apples, carrots, kale, zucchini, strawberries, and beets--and whisked them with a bit of bottled tangerine juice (we had bought this prior to juicing, not a bad use for it). I grated fresh ginger into that for some bite. Then I whizzed up a flour blend in the vitamix from oats, almonds, flax, lentils, amaranth, and whole wheat. This was a heavy batter, so I threw in big spoonfuls of baking powder AND soda, and seasoned it with cinnamon, freshly grated nutmeg, and allspice, and stirred in a teaspoon of vanilla.

I hardly need to tell you that the batter tasted amazing.

Hoping against hope that my calculations of time and temperature would do the trick to fully bake this dense and super moist bread, I put the mini loaf pans in 15 minutes before the muffin tins. When the timer went off and I hesitantly opened one of the muffins, it was steamy inside but set. They had risen just enough, and even though the bits of green that were exposed on top were a little, erm, charred, they were spicy, slightly sweet, and delicious.

My next experiment may be pulp soup. Stay tuned.

Tuesday, March 6, 2012

Beeting Heart

I love this photo. Beets have come to be one of my favorite vegetables. They have a quirkiness to them for sure, they stand out once rooted out of the soil... much as they would prefer to blend in and hide. Sweet, bright yet dark, beautiful, unexpected. They leave their mark on everything they touch.

For in depth nutritional info on beets, go here: http://www.whfoods.com/genpage.php?tname=foodspice&dbid=49

Friday, March 2, 2012

Ten Pounds

Brief post to say that this morning (the day after I worked a pretty physical eight hour work shift moving and lifting 50 pound boxes all day!), my scale says 123.4 today! I even ate a big no oil hummus wrap yesterday (cut it up and ate it in thirds between juices).

That makes a ten pound weight loss in six days, folks.

*Tapdance*