Tricks To Juicing On A Budget

Juicing on a budget for a crowd is tough. If you need 6-12 servings for your family, raise your hand.

Juicing is very beneficial during the early stages of healing and is not optional on the GAPS protocol. It is also very helpful when someone backslides with their illness. But...

...juicing is messy, expensive, and usually yields disappointingly low amounts of liquid. There are however some tricks to eliminate the headache juicing causes to mothers of many children:

Use High Yield Fruit And Vegetables

You'll quickly realize that juicing puts a big hamper on the food budget. It is also disappointing to see how little juice you get out of some vegetables like carrots. To save a little money and get a higher yield juice, keep in mind that the juicier the fruit or vegetable, the more juice you'll get when done. Here are some of the top high yielders:

• Cucumber
• Celery
• Oranges
• Grapefruits
• Pineapples

GAPS juicers should stick with what is recommended in Gut And Phycology Syndrome even when juicing on a budget: 

• 50% highly therapeutic ingredients: carrot, celery, greens, etc.
• 50% tasty ingredients: pineapple, apple, orange, etc.

Avoid Fancy Equipment

If you are making juice for a crowd, skip the juicer. All you need is a Cuisinart, a bowl, and a cheese cloth. 

Fill the cuisinart full of desired ingredients. Blend, then strain pulp through a cheesecloth. It's that easy. You may need to make a full batch of carrots, a full batch of apples, then a final batch of high yield fruits and veggies as well as a few therapeutic ingredients to this final batch. If you are making juice for two you can pull it off in one batch. 

Juicers are annoying because they only have one purpose. A cuisinart on the other hand is indispensable to a GAPS kitchen. If you are juicing on a budget, you're probably happy to hear you don't need any fancy equipment.

Think Of Percentages When Preparing Recipes

Don't measure, rather think of percentages. Juicing vegetables bought in bulk should make up the biggest percentage of your recipe.

• 50% carrot
• 25% apples
• 20% high yielders like cucumber, pineapple or citrus
  
• 5% beets
  

This combo will give you the most juice for your buck.

Use A Basic Recipe Then Add Variety

The quickest way to blow your food budget on juicing is by trying fancy recipes. They are good, and it is fun. But these are more like cocktails. Save the fun for cocktails and stick to a basic recipe for juicing on a budget.

The basic GAPS recipe is 50% carrot, 25% apple, 5% beets, 20% whatever. For the 20% use in season high yielders. Stick to the same 20% "whatever" each week.

Use whatever is on hand if you run out. Don't go to the store just for something tasty that is most likely out of season. Try having your "whatever" cost around a dollar a pound. If you're on a tight food budget steer clear of anything that is over three dollars a pound.

Stick To One Recipe For An Entire Week

Sticking to one recipe a week helps save costs and trips to the grocery store. You know you'll buy more than just one grapefruit if you run to the store for it. Sticking to one recipe for the week makes juicing way less of a production as well.

It speeds up planning, preparation and clean up time. If you're broke and have a big family you're probably short on time too. 

Don't Be Afraid Of Adding Water

You can and should dilute your juice. Adding equal parts water and juice is too much water. Try filling all the cups with juice and adding just enough water to make the cups appear a little fuller.

If you need to add a lot of water to make your juice stretch, cosider heating water with honey then adding water. If you add enough honey to make the water sweet, you may get away with adding upwards of equal parts water. 

A Final Word About Juicing On A Budget

If there is little room in the budget for juicing, give the sickest person the juice daily and give juice to the rest of the family once a week. Definitely keep up the juicing. It is not optional but very necessary for GAPS people. It's like taking a multivitamin but better.