Quick How To Guides (Part Five)
Quick Guide Five - How to make a totally disgusting drink, which is healthy for you.
1. Take half a cabbage, a large celery and some beetroot.
NOTE: You can add other things to make it more palatable too, like fruit etc.
There are good reasons why I use this combination for my totally disgustingly healthy drink.
The Cabbage is one of the best things for the stomach lining. As a lot of my regular readers know, I've had stomach problems for the last twenty years. So getting a little cabbage into me, is a good thing.
The beetroot is one of the best things for helping the liver. It helps fight fatty liver and also is great if you've been out on the town drinking yourself stupid. It helps reverse some of the damage done by a big binge.
The celery is also good for weight loss and has other health implications. (Which is why celery tablets are also available from health stores and supermarkets etc).
I'll let you look up the other health benefits of all these things.
2. Clean them.
If you are like me, the last thing you want in your drink is sand or bits of insect (celery seems to come from the super market with both of these things! Yuch!)
3. Chop them up so that the cabbage and celery will fit into a juicer.
Yes, we are juicing these and not blending these. I bought the juicer about seven years ago, as I was (at that stage) juicing cabbages for my stomach problems. I discovered something about cabbage juice.
First, it is totally disgusting to drink on its own.
Second, it has a nasty tanginess to it, that doesn't do the tongue any good.
Third, no matter what you stick with it, you can never seem to make it taste any better (though the beetroot and celery seem to take the edge off it). If anything, sticking apple juice or water melon juice or other things with it, just seems to ruin whatever you stick with it.
4. Put the cabbage and celery through the juicer.
5. Chop the beetroot up so that it will fit into a blender.
The reason for blending the beetroot, as opposed to juicing it, is I found I could juice a beetroot, and get very little in the way of juice from it.
Someone once gave me a book which showed the equivalent amounts you need to eat in order to get the same quantities of vegetables. Juicing (or blending) helps to break the vegetable down so that the body takes it in quicker, and less is lost through not being digested. According to the book, a juiced cabbage is equivalent to something like one hundred cabbages! I have no idea how accurate the book is (or was), but the numbers certainly looked very impressive.
6. Put the beetroot through a blender.
This of course leaves all the chunky bits of beetroot in the mixture. You'll find it floats on top once all the ingredients are mixed together.
7. Take the blended Beetroot and Juiced Cabbage and Celery and stick them in a jug and mix them up.
Actually, the jug is also so you don't spill the juice all over the place. It's easier to do the next step.
8. Pour the contents of the jug into a bottle and add water.
See, told you it was easier! :-)
The water also helps make the concoction more palatable to drink. Don't try to water down cabbage juice on it's own though. I found that just made more bad tasting cabbage juice. :-)
9. Drink.
Actually, when you get to this stage, you'll notice all the beetroot bits at the top of the bottle, which makes the juice hard to get out. Shake the bootle before pouring into a glass (or drinking it straight out of the bottle like I did).
What I did fitted into a one and a half litre bottle (with water added to fill it to the top). I find this is easy enough to drink, without the problems of the cabbage overwhelming the flavour.
My mother claimed I was going to be releasing wind all day today ... I haven't. (Yes, that is a little surprising). Cabbage has a bad reputation in that category of things. (And probably well deserved). Of course, most human wind is the cause of undigested products breaking down inthe bowels. With less cabbage undigested, there is of course less reason for it to create wind.
My brother Jeff is a big advocate of beetroot. He told me that if you eat enough of it, all your waste products start to look purple. (Including your pee). I haven't found this to be the case, but, I am not living off beetroot and nothing else like he does some weeks. I'm also not that obsessed with my waste products to care what colour it is.
I've been drinking about a quarter of the bottle each day.
Tell me if you try this ... another good one to help the chronitc alcoholic is to have raw vegetable juice made from Purple Cabbage, Carrot, Orange, and Beetroot with 50% water added to dilute it. According to scientists this mixture restores a thing called 'glutathione' to your body, which is essential for liver regeneration. Liver function also relies on Vitamin K - this is found in green leafy vegetables, so chow down on that cabbage and bok choy!
[As I've had one drink in two and a half years, you probably wonder why I am bothering ... well, I suspect some of my readers drink more than me, so hey, just helping look after your livers!] :-)
1. Take half a cabbage, a large celery and some beetroot.
NOTE: You can add other things to make it more palatable too, like fruit etc.
There are good reasons why I use this combination for my totally disgustingly healthy drink.
The Cabbage is one of the best things for the stomach lining. As a lot of my regular readers know, I've had stomach problems for the last twenty years. So getting a little cabbage into me, is a good thing.
The beetroot is one of the best things for helping the liver. It helps fight fatty liver and also is great if you've been out on the town drinking yourself stupid. It helps reverse some of the damage done by a big binge.
The celery is also good for weight loss and has other health implications. (Which is why celery tablets are also available from health stores and supermarkets etc).
I'll let you look up the other health benefits of all these things.
2. Clean them.
If you are like me, the last thing you want in your drink is sand or bits of insect (celery seems to come from the super market with both of these things! Yuch!)
3. Chop them up so that the cabbage and celery will fit into a juicer.
Yes, we are juicing these and not blending these. I bought the juicer about seven years ago, as I was (at that stage) juicing cabbages for my stomach problems. I discovered something about cabbage juice.
First, it is totally disgusting to drink on its own.
Second, it has a nasty tanginess to it, that doesn't do the tongue any good.
Third, no matter what you stick with it, you can never seem to make it taste any better (though the beetroot and celery seem to take the edge off it). If anything, sticking apple juice or water melon juice or other things with it, just seems to ruin whatever you stick with it.
4. Put the cabbage and celery through the juicer.
5. Chop the beetroot up so that it will fit into a blender.
The reason for blending the beetroot, as opposed to juicing it, is I found I could juice a beetroot, and get very little in the way of juice from it.
Someone once gave me a book which showed the equivalent amounts you need to eat in order to get the same quantities of vegetables. Juicing (or blending) helps to break the vegetable down so that the body takes it in quicker, and less is lost through not being digested. According to the book, a juiced cabbage is equivalent to something like one hundred cabbages! I have no idea how accurate the book is (or was), but the numbers certainly looked very impressive.
6. Put the beetroot through a blender.
This of course leaves all the chunky bits of beetroot in the mixture. You'll find it floats on top once all the ingredients are mixed together.
7. Take the blended Beetroot and Juiced Cabbage and Celery and stick them in a jug and mix them up.
Actually, the jug is also so you don't spill the juice all over the place. It's easier to do the next step.
8. Pour the contents of the jug into a bottle and add water.
See, told you it was easier! :-)
The water also helps make the concoction more palatable to drink. Don't try to water down cabbage juice on it's own though. I found that just made more bad tasting cabbage juice. :-)
9. Drink.
Actually, when you get to this stage, you'll notice all the beetroot bits at the top of the bottle, which makes the juice hard to get out. Shake the bootle before pouring into a glass (or drinking it straight out of the bottle like I did).
What I did fitted into a one and a half litre bottle (with water added to fill it to the top). I find this is easy enough to drink, without the problems of the cabbage overwhelming the flavour.
My mother claimed I was going to be releasing wind all day today ... I haven't. (Yes, that is a little surprising). Cabbage has a bad reputation in that category of things. (And probably well deserved). Of course, most human wind is the cause of undigested products breaking down inthe bowels. With less cabbage undigested, there is of course less reason for it to create wind.
My brother Jeff is a big advocate of beetroot. He told me that if you eat enough of it, all your waste products start to look purple. (Including your pee). I haven't found this to be the case, but, I am not living off beetroot and nothing else like he does some weeks. I'm also not that obsessed with my waste products to care what colour it is.
I've been drinking about a quarter of the bottle each day.
Tell me if you try this ... another good one to help the chronitc alcoholic is to have raw vegetable juice made from Purple Cabbage, Carrot, Orange, and Beetroot with 50% water added to dilute it. According to scientists this mixture restores a thing called 'glutathione' to your body, which is essential for liver regeneration. Liver function also relies on Vitamin K - this is found in green leafy vegetables, so chow down on that cabbage and bok choy!
[As I've had one drink in two and a half years, you probably wonder why I am bothering ... well, I suspect some of my readers drink more than me, so hey, just helping look after your livers!] :-)
posted by Dabido @ 9/25/2005 03:12:00 pm
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