Recipe Juice

I know, juices might sound slightly weird in a Christmas themed magazine, but then isn’t December and more specifically Christmas a time for lots of family dinners and all kinds of parties? And what is better than impressing your guests with different types of fresh juices?

Fresh juices can be just as healthy as eating whole fruits. I am talking about homemade fresh fruit juices and not the packaged ones. The home-made juices are packed with enzymes, minerals and vitamins that are necessary for our bodily functions and which are easily absorbed in our bodies.

If you decide to omit or limit yourself with the sugar you do not have to feel guilty if you often indulge in a fresh, chilled glass of juice after a meal. Unfortunately, I for one am guilty of adding quite a healthy amount of sugar to the fresh fruit juices I make at home. I have a sweet tooth!

Besides impressing your guests with your cleverly mixed fruit juices, did you know that juices could be a very good way to a healthy and glowing skin? Most fruits and vegetables contain nutrients, which flush out toxins, which affect our glowing, and elastic skin and hair hence we tend to use certain fruits and vegetables such as cucumbers, apricots, and papaya as face packs or scrubs on our bodies to maintain or restore our radiant skin. It evidently helps but eating those same fruits and vegetables make our skin glow from within which makes us more beautiful!

My fridge looks empty and sad if I don’t have a jug of juice in it. And I absolutely hate it when I have unexpected guests visiting and I do not have juice to serve them and have to make do with something store bought instead.

I enjoy mixing different kinds of fruits and vegetables to make delicious juices. My personal favourite and most talked about juice in my family is bottle gourd juice. I peel and either grate or cut the bottle gourd into cubes. Put this in the blender together with juice of about 2 lemons (you can adjust the lemons to your taste) add sugar to taste, add water and blend it. Sieve, add a pinch of salt and refrigerate it for a couple of hours. You could also add a sprig of mint before blending to give it a minty flavour.  The juice is ready to be served.

Adding bottle gourd to your diet helps to reduce stress, benefits the heart and skin, helps to prevent premature grey hair, helps in weight loss and a lot of other things.

You could also combine mango and cucumbers. Mango has a strong flavour so it can easily overpower any fruit you combine it with, so the trick would be to use more of cucumbers and less of mangos. Mangoes are packed with nutrients and antioxidants. It is a low-calorie fruit and high in fibre just like cucumbers which are also low in calories but are high in water content and are a good source of many vitamins and minerals. Did you know cucumbers help the most in lowering blood sugar levels?

Adding mint and lemon to any of your juices changes its taste and can take the flavours to a whole new level.  Take example of plain and simple watermelon juice. Delicious and cool on its own but adding a dash of lemon juice and bits of mint to it and voila! You have a different kind of taste altogether.

Mint contains an added dose of vitamins, calcium and minerals whereas lemons are a good source of vitamin C and helps to reduce risks of anemia, kidney stones, digestive issues and some kinds of cancers.

When there is a lack of sufficient blood flow in our bodies and high blood pressure, many times doctors suggest taking beetroot juice. But beetroot juice on its own might not seem too tempting isn’t it, but guess what? Adding our favourite ingredients lemon and/or mint will improve its taste drastically.

Have you tried mixing pineapples with ginger?  Ginger wards of germs and protects our bodies from diseases, it helps to calm nausea and relieves indigestion whereas the nutrient packed pineapple contains disease-fighting antioxidants, it boosts metabolism and nourishes skin, nail and hair too!

You might argue saying isn’t it better and healthier simply to eat fresh fruits rather than making juice out of them. I would reply by saying obviously, eating wholes fruits is always better, however don’t you think it is fun to mix and match fruits and create delicious concoctions out of them? An additional fruit dose during meal times? And mind you, as I mentioned earlier on, you can make these juices entirely healthy by not adding any sugar to it or substituting sugar with either honey or jaggery, which actually not only helps to boost our immune system but is also a natural sweetener!

If there are any fruits you have blended that are unique to you, please do share! I am always on a look out for “weird” fruit juice combinations.

By Ummehani

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