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Tuesday, January 4, 2011

Happy New Year and What to do with Carrot Pulp



HAPPY NEW YEAR!! Wishing you good health and happiness in 2011.

It was a busy weekend spending time with friends and family now I'm getting back into gear for the changes being made for the new year. Like many others, I fell off the healthy eating wagon a bit. Mostly, too many carbs even with 'healthful' meals I made, and cocktails don't do real well with my body. No drunkenness here but I feel the effect in my gut the next day. So I'm getting back on track, loaded up my grocery cart with lots of produce, nuts and seeds, and came home for some juicing and healthy baking.

photo courtesy of grouprecipes.com
I combined a myriad of frozen fruits with some spinach and raw egg to make two vintage refrigerator bottles full, then I juiced 5 lbs. of carrots and mixed it with 3 squeezed lemons to fill another refrigerator bottle. I did juice carrots last week so I had a plethora of pulp. Although I have a compost pile, I like to eat it if I can and I add it to the dogs' meals a bit.

Because I use the internet so much, I did a quick search because with all the raw food and vegetarian recipe books I have, I don't have anything on using the leftover pulp from juicing. I found two recipes that I like, they happen to be vegan. I made a couple changes to them and they turned out well.

The first is a Carrot Cake recipe. I put in only one cup of sugar, the batter still tasted too sweet but the cake really doesn't, I will try even less next time. What the recipe should tell you is that it doesn't come together like regular cake batter, it's much stiffer, like a cookie dough. I put mine into a 7"x11" glass baking dish. It did rise but remains a little dense but not banana bread dense. I probably should have cooked it a bit longer even though my knife pulled out clean. Very moist. I picked this recipe because it used so much of the carrot pulp, I will make it again, but will change the sugar to a more body friendly sweetener and also change the flour to a gluten free product. I used what I had on hand. I omitted the raisins since I'm not a fan of raisins in my food but I did add the walnuts.

The second recipe is Golden Macaroons. I doubled the recipe, I wanted to have a bunch on hand for little snacks and figure I'll be able to freeze some. The doubled recipe made 60 tablespoon size macaroons. What I changed: I used Agave Nectar 1/3 cup plus about half of a 1/3 cup for the sweetener. 2 cups of coconut because it's what was available and not the sweetened kind. The batter got stuck in my stainless tablespoon so I tapped the edge of it on the cookie sheet until they came out, which took several taps. It was annoying me so my mind went into "how can I make this better?" gear. hmmmm, aha! hot water! I filled a glass with hot water, dipped the tablespoon into it before packing the batter ...tap tap....like magic it came out. I cooked it for the suggested 30 minutes and, of course, tried a couple. The insides were still too moist for me so I just put them back in. They were cooled already so we'll see if it changes them but I figure there's no baking soda or powder in them so they'll just dehydrate a little more.

The third thing I did with the pulp is put some in the chicken soup I made, which, I'm going to eat now.

Happy New Year and Happy Healthy Cooking!!

4 comments:

  1. Happy New Year! Denise I think I have some pulp recipes, I will look and see. We need fiber so eating the pulp is fantastic! I love apple-celery juice but drink more smoothies than juice, my body does better with the fiber left in. The carrot cake looked great, one of Tom's fav's! Tonight I made a soba noodles, broccoli, gluten free soy sauce, fresh ginger, little onion, garlic, veggies broth, portabella mushrooms sliced, sea salt for taste, and then garnished with some I am carrots peel, I will post on my recipe site soon. www.icafrecipebox.blogspot.com it was so good! The girls had greens, veggies and grain free wet food for dinner! They loved it...ha ha who am I kidding ,....they will eat most anything!

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  2. Gloria -- YES! they will eat anything. The entree sounds good. Most of my juicing is more smoothy-like because I believe the fiber to be good for you. Sometimes I have to be careful because it makes me feel bloated...they're great for a good start to the morning and then a snack in the afternoon.

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  3. I'm confused. You put spinach and fruit AND a raw egg together and juiced it?
    Um, was it a green color? Can't you get salmonella from an uncooked egg? I mean, sure I risk it sometimes too....when I eat cookie dough.
    And pulp, is that the stuff that sticks to the side of the glass? like orange juice pulp?
    No wonder you're a stick.

    I do like the idea of blending some fruit together though.....with some ice and maybe a splash of UV Blue

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  4. Yes, Cindi, fruit, frozen O.J., spinach and raw egg. Technically, blended, not juiced. Sometimes it's kale or collards, depends what I have on hand, and yes, it's green but the sweetness of the fruit and juice added keeps it palatable. I've been doing the raw egg thing for a long time (you can't tell it's in there.) I typically use organic or locally grown ones. Manufactured eggs on a large scale don't appeal to me for many inhumane and antibiotic/hormones added, reasons.

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