Getting Creative with Tomatoes: Fresh Vegetable Juice

Wednesday, October 12, 2011

Juices have a mixed rap in the nutrition world, and consuming whole fruits and vegetables is always better for lots of reasons.

But when I tried smushing up an entire tomato, a stalk of celery, and some onions in a tall glass then added ice and vodka to make a bloody mary, it really didn’t work out.

Point 1: There’s a time and place for vegetable and fruit juices and pureés in the diet, and that’s in cocktails – especially if you love featuring farm fresh produce in imaginative ways, like I do. (Or mocktails, if you don’t drink alcohol.)

Point 2: Vegetable and fruit juices also have some not-so-good issues despite their delightful utility. (See above point.) This is a subject that requires further discussion, and I’ll examine these beverage categories separately soon.

In the meantime, I wanted to share my recent experience making vegetable juice. And guess what? I’ve never even made it before. It’s just that I’ve been thinking about tomatoes a lot lately – see many of my posts of the past two weeks – and after making so many dishes with them, I thought: Huzzah! A bloody mary made with homemade vegetable juice!

Check out the video. You can also watch the intro video and vegetable stock video if you missed them and then watch me serve up a glass of fresh vegetable juice and make a Bloody Mary here. I’ll also post a brief discussion considering the pros and cons of veggie juice, a subject that came up in my class a few weeks ago.

When I was at the farmers’ market on Sunday there were still tons of tomatoes, so it’s not too late to make up a batch yourself…

Thanks for watching!