Various combinations of fruits and veggies pressed into juice is all the rage these days, at least in SoCal where I live. My father-in-law got me and my husband (then boyfriend) a Jack LaLanne juicer about five years ago and we have been juicing ever since. It may not be the fanciest juicer or the latest model, but it has served us well for many years now.
I typically make healthy choices when it comes to what I eat. When I was pregnant with Bodhi, I was hyper aware of what I was putting in my body since I was sharing everything I consumed with my growing baby. Fresh pressed juice was a great way to pack a lot of vitamins and nutrients into a single glass, so I was pretty religious about it while pregnant. Our go-to juice has always been beet, apple, carrot and ginger with a little bit of flax oil and Kyolic (garlic extract). I recently tried a new combo of kale, cucumber, apple and ginger and it was divine. The addition of cucumber makes a very refreshing juice that would be lovely in the summer time.
We consider ourselves earth-conscious people, at least as much as we can be living on the westside of Los Angeles in a 2 bedroom apartment. We have a compost heap in the backyard and a good size vegetable garden. Waste is something we try to avoid, though it's not always possible (or admittedly, convenient). One waste product we always struggle with is all the fruit and vegetable pulp byproduct of juicing. My husband, Justin, once tried making it into muffins. They weren't bad even though he forgot to add sugar, but since then we have been searching for a good way to turn this "waste" into something delicious.
Recently, our father-in-law, a long time juicer, told us that he just started making his juice pulp into crackers in his dehydrator. We took a stab at our own version of a pulp cracker this afternoon and it turned out so amazing, that I had to share. If you like to juice, this is a must try recipe and a great way to use your leftover fruit and veggie pulp. You can really use your imagination with this recipe, too, depending on what kind of pulp you have. You can make sweet crackers or savory crackers and try out different spices. Today, we made a simple apple-ginger juice because we had a ton of apples that needed to get used. Here is our recipe for apple-ginger crackers.
1 cup apple ginger pulp
1/4 cup ground trail mix
2 Tbs. whole flaxseeds
2 Tbs. flaxmeal
2 Tbs. honey
1/2 tsp. cinnamon
Grind trail mix in a food processor or coffee grinder. Mix all the ingredients in a bowl. Transfer mixture a silpat or other non-stick baking surface and press into a sheet about 1/4" thick. Bake in the lowest temperature your oven will go (our lowest possible temp was 175 degrees) for approximately 1 hour or until the cracker is completely dried out and starting to brown. Let cool and break into pieces.
The amounts above are my best guess at what we used. Using exact amounts is less important than achieving the consistency you need to press the pulp into a large cracker. The apple ginger pulp we were working with was quite watery, so we added flaxmeal and ground trail mix to absorb some of that wetness. You don't want it to be too watery or too dry, so add dry ingredients until you achieve the desired consistency.
Here is a picture of our cracker before we broke it into pieces.
These crackers are perfect as an appetizer served with goat cheese. Throwing our juice pulp on the compost heap isn't so bad, but these crackers are so much better!
