A juicing experience: Ruby Red Juice

Military Life:  Did you know all military members have to pass a annual/semi annual physical fitness test every year (PT test as we like to call it).  If you dont you could potentially be kicked out of the military for not staying physically fit. The military puts a lot of emphases on being "fit to fight" you wont do yourself or any of your battle buddies any good if you are huffing and puffing in your 50 lbs Kevlar gear in the desert under hostile conditions, trust me that gear is heavy I know.  Now we're all not constantly deployed or in hostile conditions, but you still need to stay fit incase you have to be deployed, not to mention its just healthier and better for you if you are constantly striving to be or stay fit.  Plus talk about a good motivator to get your butt in the gym, (at least for me it is) its either workout and stay in shape or basically get fired!  In the last few years as I start to creep up into my late 20's, dare I say close to 30 :/  I have found it harder and harder to keep those pesky pounds off, I was not fortunate enough to be blessed with the skinny gene, I have always had to make sure that I not only eat healthy but I have to add daily exercise into my routine or poof I swear in 3 months I can put on 10 lbs.  

Because of my constant need and my own personal desire to stay healthy and fit, I have been trying to incorporate more vitamins into my diet.  My kryptonite is a multivitamin, this girl cannot talk adult sized multivitamin without getting sick, seriously it will come right back up (sorry not trying to gross you out), I've tried taking Flintstone vitamins but I'm the worst at remembering to take it and even when I do they still make me somewhat nauseas. Recently I came across an article about juicing and how juicing your veggies and fruits deliver their vitamins and nutrients straight into your blood stream because your stomach doesn't need to break down or digest any of the fibers from the produce.  Well, I received a juicer a couple of months ago for a birthday present from my hubby, and he was smart and didn't buy a super expensive one, he got me something mid price and would get the job done and I could not be happier with my juicer.

 I love taking random fruits and veggies from the fridge and juicing them to see what delicious concoctions I can create, not only do I enjoy taking my vitamins in juice form but its quite filling and I sometimes will drink a big glass of juice as a meal replacement.  You'll also find out quickly which combinations dont work while juicing,  like celery ...Yuck, seriously I'm not kidding freakin gross! I dont know what it is but I thought I would like cerely, I cook with it, I like to eat it raw but I found that I do not like it juiced at all, it literally runis any juice if I add a stalk of celery in it, its just so over powering and bitter? not sure how else to explain it, but celery will probably never end up in a juice of mine ever again, especially not after having to choke down a juice I made recently with celery in it, because I refused to toss it down the drain, especially when most fruits and veggies are pretty pricy here in Japan. Other than hating on celery I really enjoy beets, they have a distinct taste but not in a bad way, and juicing beets produces the most gorgeous ruby color. This particular juice is very beety, if its too overwhelming try adding grapefruit. 

This picture does not represent the amount
I put into the juice, just the produce I used,
 I used almost half of what you
see here for my juice (not shown is lemon)

Ruby Red
Recipe by Oishii Treats

Yields:  8 oz

Ingredients

1/2 (2" in diameter) Beet, peeled and sliced small enough to fit in your juicer
1/2  (5 inch long) Sweet Potato, sliced
1 small carrot or 5-6 baby carrots
1 small apple, sliced and remove seeds
1 inch sized piece of ginger
2 think slices of a lemon, cut off the peel

Directions

-Add all ingredients into your juicer, once juiced, stir all together and enjoy.



This is a rough estimate of the nutrition and vitamins of this particular juice from using Juice Recipes Juice Builder

Calories: 108  Potassium: 497 mg  Vitamin A: 52.5%  Vitamin C: 15.96%  Calcium: 3.55% Iron: 10.56%

Note: If the juice is too beety try adding some grapefruit for a more sweet and sour flavor.

Apple Pie

There is nothing better than your house filling up
with the aroma of delicious homemade apple pie.  Oh man does it smell good in my house, forget about candles I'm just going to make pie whenever I want my house to smell like christmas.  So for this delicious apple pie, we  procured our apples from an orchard in Aomori Japan.  We recently went on an apple picking tour and had the chance to pick apples at a local orchard and eat as many as we could before our picking time was up.  I have no clue what's in the soil here in Japan. But these are some massive apples!
It took only 3 to fill the pie; talk about your giant apples.


Apple Pie
Adapted from Tikkido

Ingredients for Crust

4 cups flour
1 1/3 cups cold butter
2 teaspoons salt
2 tablespoons sugar
1 table spoon cinnamon
12 tablespoons cold water
3 tablespoons vodka

Directions

- Mix all the dry ingredients in a large bowl.
- Next using a sharp knife cut your butter into small grape sized cubes and add it to the flour mixture
- In a separate small bowl combine your cold water and vodka
- Using your hands mix and squish the butter and flour together for a couple of minutes.
- Add 2 tablespoons of water mixture to your flour and combine with your hands
- Keep adding water 2 tablespoons at a time until you start forming a ball of dough.
- You most likely will not need to use all of the water to make the dough, just keep adding 2 tablespoons at a time until the dough starts forming.
- Once you get a ball of dough, flour a flat smooth surface and divide your dough in half.
- Roll out half of your dough large enough to fill a pie pan.  cut away excess dough from the edge of your pie pan
- Save the other half of your dough when you are ready to add it to the top of your pie. put the crust and dough into the fridge until your ready to add your apples

Ingredients for Filling

3 large apples or if you dont have mutan apples like mine 4-5 apples any kind
1/2 sugar
1/4 cup brown sugar
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
1 teaspoon cinnamon
2 tablespoons flour
1 tablespoons lemon juice
2 tablespoons cold butter

Directions

- Preheat your oven to 375 degrees
- peel and slice your apples and add it to a large bowl
- Drizzle your lemon juice over apple slices and combine (i used my hands to mix the apples)
- add your sugars, cinnamon and nutmeg to the apples and mix
- add the flour and mix into your apples
- Add your apple mixture
- slice your cold butter and add it to the top of the apples
- roll out the other half of your dough and top your pie.
- cut off excess dough from the edges and using your fingers pinch together the top and bottom dough around the rim together forming a ruffle effect.
- Slice a few vent holes in the top of the crust to allow steam to escape while baking
- Bake for 40 minutes, once done allow to cool on a wire rack. once cool enough transfer to fridge to allow the juice to firm up and thicken.  serve with some vanilla ice cream and whip cream