I’ve recently bumped my centrifugal juicer over in favor of whole juicing in a blender in the battle to get more veggies into my child and more fiber into my spouse.

I happen to use a Vitamix, but Blendtec or any other home blender would do.  You might not get exactly the same “smoothie” texture, but give it enough water or juice base to liquefy and it should be good enough.  You will still get the fiber and pulp that a centrifugal juicer would strain out.

One of my new favorite resources for blend ideas to try is Natalie Savona’s “The Big Book of Juices.”

THE PROS

Here’s the good stuff about the book:

• A nice introduction covering the definitions of juice vs smoothie, how to select your equipment, how to select your ingredients, healthy additives etc.
• There is one recipe per page, quite a lot with gorgeous color photos. At the bottom of each recipe you get a chart with stars showing how that particular drink rates for energy, detox, immunity, digestion, and skin properties. Plenty of space to write in your own comments after trying a blend out.

• The recipes are in chapters by main kind of juice and then main ingredient.  For instance, you see “Vegetable Based Juices — Green Veg” followed by “Vegetable Based Juices — Root Veg.” The index in the back also can lead you to blends by specific ingredient — spinach, orange, apple, celery, etc.
• The back of the book has a quick reference charts.  One is for nutrients and what foods would have them. Another is for juices for different ailments and suggested blends for that ailment.

THE CONS

Here’s what I thought could be improved:

• The suggested blends don’t give precise, consistent measures across the book. Sometimes we get “tablespoons” and “milliliters” and other times we’re talking “handful” and “a bunch.”

I wish it had tried to give ingredients  in terms of weight like “2 ounces of blueberries”, and then give the resulting quantity  of juice in terms of volume like “makes about 3 cups.”  Whole jucing is tasty, but I don’t want to drink oxidized leftovers that have turned brown and unappealing. I find myself writing in that kind of commentary when I try blends out so I can remember how much a suggested blend makes. “Made Blue Healer today.  Made like it is, it filled about two  12 oz glasses.”

BOTTOM LINE

If you are going to get just one book on juicing, this one would be a good bet to cover most needs. It has plenty of ideas to keep you experimenting for a long time.  You are bound to find plenty that you like among the 400+ suggestions!

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