The Best Homemade Juices to start out your 2023

Here we are in the first week and January and for most of us that means back to the grind, back to work. The holidays are over and we have to wait 330 days to listen to Shakin Stevens’s Christmas music again. If it’s January 2024 maybe you and your family are also trying out a healthy lifestyle or a juice cleanse this winter. I know I am. Right after I teach my dog how to go sledding.

Because that’s a normal thing to do right? Being tourist-centric Big Bear Lake California’s only hiking guide has me crazy busy in the winter months when we have any snow on the ground. My biggest money maker for the year is taking tourists out to the wilderness to play in the snow. My snow play experience is the highest-rated experience for Big Bear Lake California and Thanksgiving through President’s Day weekend has me working seven days a week out in the snow. Good thing I love snowy winter with a bizarre passion! But you know what else I love with a passion? A homemade healthy green juice!

Oh-Oh-Oh Orange and Green Juice!

Let’s face it, we are not all Oprah and we can’t afford to Oh-Oh’Oh-Zempic. So how else can you get back into shape and dear God lose that Covid nineteen lbs in this first month of 2024? Teaching your puppy how to sled is one way to do it.

Snowshoeing to one of the tallest peaks in Big Bear Lake is another. One of my favorite healthy lifestyle changes, as we enter into 2024, is creating my own at-home juice cleanse. I try to start most mornings with only having green juice until lunchtime. I like to do all my juicing on the same day so I only make one great sticky kitchen mess. I make all my juice cleanse madness, filling up gallons in the fridge and then I take a great big mason jar of green juice to work with me. And then I chug green juice anytime visions of a Carl’s Jr Diablo Protein Burger come racing through my head.

Who does not love a good juice cleanse? I love a fresh citrus and ginger juice cleanse in the winter when citrus is so in season. Some people might be into juicing year-round for many different reasons but I’m a big fan of a winter juice cleanse when grapefruits, Cara Cara oranges and blood oranges are in season. This season I was so lucky that the kale stayed fresh in my garden well into the first week in December! Home-grown organic kale is delightful in any of these juices! This Blood Orange, Ginger, Grapefruit and Spinach Juice is one of my absolute favorite go-to juices. And you can always add kale instead of lettuce.

Baby, it’s cold outside

In our family, we brag a lot about how smart our three-year-old Catahoula puppy is. Yesterday I taught the puppy how to use a sled and I think I am practically the dog whisperer now. No one else seems very impressed by the fact that I taught my puppy something that basically any five-year-old can do but I think it’s pretty damn cool. And if you saw my previous post about how badly I suck at TickTok I would just like to say, I discovered the key to the algorithm; Dogs on sleds. That was all it took. All of a sudden I learned how to social media. All it took was teaching my dog how to go sledding and adding in some peppy surf music.

After a long morning of snowshoeing with my dog or possibly sledding with my dog, I could use a delicious and healthy green juice like this Pineapple, Pear, Spinach and Mint Juice. Unfortunately, wintertime means I have to buy mint in bulk which kills me. In the springtime, we grow so much mint in our garden and I get obsessed with it. I put it in juice. I add it to my favorite salads. I make vats of mint chutney. It kills me how expensive it is to buy mint for four months out of the year especially when I use so much of it on a weekly basis.

Shots, shots, shots!

Hey, I never said teaching a dog to go sledding would be easy. Well, actually it was easy! But let’s have some shots anyway! Caliente carrot juice shots I mean! Because if it’s the juice cleanse season, put down the tequila and pick up that chunk of ginger over yonder. This has to be the very best thing to do with leftover carrots ever. Carrot, Ginger, and Jalapeno Shot.

So in between juice cleanse madness this week we have been teaching the Catahoula puppy new tricks. She just learned how to lay down this week so definitely let’s go sledding was the next trick she needed to learn. Lousiana Hunting Dog’s or Catahoula’s are known to be very smart and very stubborn. Luckily as soon as I convinced Luna to get on the sled, on flat ground, she was easily coaxed to lay down and the next thing I knew I was pulling her through the fresh snow and an internet sensation was born! Look out Taylor Swift! You have competition now!