Drinking The Green Monster

It's 5:30 am on day 1 guys and I just cranked out some impressive juice!  The staple juice of the cleanse is a green juice, loaded with leafy greens, that you drink twice throughout the day.  The "renovation" cleanse that I'm doing is sort of the training wheels of cleanses to try things out.  If you do the more intense extreme cleansing (quick brainstorm: can we make this a competitive sport somehow?) you drink even more of the green juice, and less of the fruit juices.

I know this juice looks scary and gross, but honestly it's pretty tasty!  The cucumber makes it very refreshing and the apples effectively drown out all the bitterness I imagined it would have from the kale.  Dare I say it?  I would probably drink this even if I weren't on a juice cleanse!

-Recipe after the jump-

Green Juice

(Makes 1 16 oz serving)

5 Ribs of Celery

1/2 Cucumber

2 Large Green Apples

3 Large Kale leaves

1 Handful Parsley

3 Romaine leaves

1 (big) Handful of Spinach

1 oz lemon juice 

1) Wash all ingredients

2) Peel the cucumber, quarter and core the apples

3) Juice all ingredients except lemon according to juicer manufacturer's directions

4) Add lemon juice and stir to mix

Tip: At first, I was having a really hard time juicing the leafy greens (and parsley in particular) - I found it works best if you take one big romaine leaf, fill it up with parsley/spinach/whatever you can fit in it, then sandwich another romaine leaf on top so you have a green burrito.  Put this whole thing down the juicer as you would any other vegetable.  If the greens can't go flying around inside the shaft they juice much more easily.  Also if your leafy pulp is looking very wet, feel free to re-juice it!