From Garden to Glass — Guest Post

Hi all! I’m happy to introduce Chris from HealthSmartLiving.com! His blog is filled with tips on hydroponic gardening, healthy cooking, juicing and overall nutritious recipes. His website even includes a review of juicers. Juicing is a foreign concept to me and looking through his blog helped answer a lot of questions I had about it.

Today, he is sharing a Spicy Tomato Juice recipe make from home grown tomatoes that looks oh so tasty! Let me turn it over to Chris…

I love August in Chicago. It’s warm, sunny, and all of my gardening efforts start to pay off. Even though we live in downtown Chicago with a 400 square foot yard, we still manage to pack a pretty good fruitful garden in. This year we grew tomatoes, peppers, onions and various herbs.

You also have to be prepared to use a lot of fresh vegetables or watch them go bad. I hope to learn canning someday but it won’t be this year. Recently I made my first batch of tomato gazpacho and it was amazing. It also was really time consuming so I would call it a special occasion dish.

Another simpler way I’ve found to use a LOT of tomatoes, jalapenos, and onions is by juicing my own tomato juice. My wife and I started juicing this spring as a way to get more fruits and vegetables in our diet and to improve our overall health. We have really enjoyed it and I’ve even dedicated a section of my personal blog to juicing. It covers all the basics to get started.

For my Spicy Tomato Juice, I started with a juice recipe from juicerecipes.com and started experimenting with it. My wife and I tried a couple different ways and I think we found the perfect spicy tomato juice.

Spicy Tomato Juice Recipe

Ingredients

•  Celery – 1 large stalk
•  Garlic – 1 clove
•  Yellow onion – 1 small (or 1⁄2 a big one)
•  Sweet Green Pepper – 1 medium
•  Tomato – 1 cup cherry tomatoes
•  Jalapeño – 1 medium sized (Optional to make spicy)

Directions

Process all fruits and vegetables in a juicer. If you aren’t sure about how spicy you want it, save the jalapeno for last so you can adjust to your taste.

A quick note about Juicing vs. Blending. Juicing is the process of extracting the liquid and nutrients from produce while leaving the pulp and fiber behind. This gives you fresh juice packed with nutrition that your body can instantly absorb. Blending simply cuts and slices everything into a liquid state. Both have their pros and cons but for this specific recipe I strongly recommend using a juicer. Blending this list of ingredients will create more of a salsa.

I love the use of cherry tomatoes in this recipe! And tomatoes really benefit from a little bit of heat so definitely take Chris’ advice and add some jalapeno to the juice! 

Thanks so much for the awesome recipe, Chris. Your tomatoes are stunning!

For more of Chris’ recipes and tips, head over to his blog HealthSmartLiving. (There is a broiled salmon recipe with blueberry basil sauce on there just calling my name!)