(photo by google images)

To juice or to blend?  That is the question I was asking myself a few weeks ago.  After looking into several brands and different options on both, I chose the blending route and we have been enjoying fabulous fruit smoothies since!  What is best for you really depends on your goal, and this difference was as fuzzy as a peach before I looked into it.  I hope sharing what I learned can make this process simpler for you, whether you are interested in it or just reading for fun.

In a nutshell, pun intended, juicing takes a whole fruit or vegetable and separates the skins and pulp and leaves a concentrated juice.  It is great for detox type cleanses and yields pure and natural unsweetened juice.  Blending produces things like fruit smoothies by processing the whole fruit or vegetable.  In blending the skins are retained, so you’re able to consume more vitamins and minerals.   Juicing yields a smoother juice, and blending yields a thicker product but can be thinned to your liking with water or adding other juices in the process.  After looking into many different makers both on line and in stores, I chose the Ninja Professional 1500 and I have been one pleased customer.  While this post is not an advertisement for Ninja, I will elaborate that I like the options it provides of economical, powerful blending with your choice of a single serve portion, a full blender, and it has a totally separate food processor system- a lot of bang for the buck.

(photo above of my Ninja with it’s parts)

So enough about Ninja, and onto the fun stuff.  There are as many combinations as you’d like to make and it is fun picking our smoothie flavors.  I think our favorite household combination has been some sort of pineapple-banana-strawberry, but I feel like I am leaving out so many others.  We have made green smoothies with kiwi and mint…we have added cucumbers and kale and spinach and my kids even liked it.  Other days we have gone tropical with mango, and sitting on my counter right now is a whole coconut we are going to bust open to use the fresh coconut water and pulp in some smoothie combination.  True, I am a food dork with things like this coconut, but it is fun, different and great for kids to know a coconut doesn’t always come shredded out of a plastic package.  I always think fresh is best, but I can’t leave out the fact that a lot of people buy frozen, already cut fruit and whip up fresh great smoothies.  If that is your style, do what works for you.  We have made what I called “Blueberry Bucks” which uses Buck O’Hairen’s Legendary Sunshine, a ginger berry flavored energy drink made right here in Winston Salem.  I blended it with blueberries and banana, and the “Rising Sun” was another Sunshine energy smoothie with fresh oranges, pineapple and apple- both great day starters when I didn’t have time for coffee or breakfast!  Whatever flavor concoction you come up with, I have found it is easy to make smoothies when I have the fruit already prepared and sliced or cut for the easy use.  Then it is like you have a fruit buffet to easily make fun smoothies for snack, breakfast or anytime in between.

So, as I was researching fruits, smoothies and so forth I ran into some quotes about fruit that I just can’t end without sharing.  I hope you enjoy the fruits of my labor as you blend or juice away!

“Avoid fruits and nuts, after all you are what you eat.”  Garfield

“Knowledge is knowing that a tomato is not a fruit; wisdom is not putting it in your fruit salad.” Miles Kington

 “Women are like fruits.  Every one has its unique color, shape, aroma and taste.  The problem is with men.  They like fruit salad.”