Make the Most of Your Garden's Bounty

by Natalie
(Sweeny, TX, USA)

If you are lucky enough to have a garden to provide you with fresh ingredients, you can really get the most out of it by putting your juicer to work making fresh juices.

Any ingredients that come straight from your garden are naturally going to taste better and provide more nutrients than store-bought produce because they are picked at peak freshness.

Even if you don't have your own garden to harvest, you can get the next best thing by purchasing from local growers at fruit and vegetable stands, or even join a coop.

And you can use almost everything that comes out of your garden in your juicer. Try a blend of fresh strawberries, raspberries, and blueberries with crushed ice and vanilla yogurt.

For a real vitamin-packed juice pick-me-up, mix a cornucopia of vegetables, like baby carrots, sugar beets, tomatoes and any kind of greens.

You can make your own potent, super-low calorie; vitamin-rich drink to rival anything you can find in a supermarket. The advantage of growing your own ingredients is that you'll never run out of what you need to concoct the healthiest juice recipes.

Freeze your extra produce for when the harvest season is over; you can thaw and blend most fruits and vegetables right from the freezer.

Berries are the easiest of all to store because you only need to rinse and freeze them in a freezer bag; then when you want some, you can take out just what you need and if you're going to make a slushie juice smoothie, you don't even have to completely thaw them.

Enjoy your fresh juices!

Mango Heaven

by Philip
(Coral Gables, Florida)

Strolling around the neighborhood in Florida I absentmindedly began to notice how many mango trees there were. What first caught my attention was the sweet, musky scent permeating the streets.

There were dozens of fallen mangoes on the ground at differing stages of decomposition. A few did not seem rotted at all, having just fallen, I presumed. I went back home, got a plastic bag and gathered them.

The mangoes were the smaller, fibrous variety, the kind that leaves strands between your teeth when eaten. I decided to use the blender to make a drink and behold out came the best smoothie I had tasted in ages!

Since then I have picked up mangoes every early summer and developed two basic recipes with either a blender or juicer.

Mango pulp with a dash of sugar (none is needed really if the mango is sweet) and a dash of cinnamon powder and water as desired for the viscosity you want; the second recipe simply replaces the cinnamon with lime and a bit more sugar than the first recipe would call for.

The added advantage to the lime is that you can freeze it in small containers to make a delicious sorbet. If using the juicer simply skip adding the water!

Mango Milk Juice

by Naresh
(Hisar, India)

It's very easy to make Mango Milk Juice..

Just take 2 mangoes with 1 pint of milk .

Peel the mangoes and cut them in small pieces, switch on the mixer grinder and put it into the grinder for 2 minutes on a level of medium speed once it's been ground add some sugar to it according to your taste with milk and grind it for a 30 seconds which makes it more creamy.

You can also add dry fruits in it according to your taste and enjoy the mango milk juice.