Juice Yourself Clean

Lodged somewhere deep in our pink fleshy cavities sit the remnants of our holiday partying: sugar, stuffing, gravy, fresh truffles, chocolates bobbing in a sea of buttered rum, and a regretful amount of palm-oil-agave frosting from a batch of pumpkin latte cupcakes. You too? For good reason, the first week in this foul new year of our lard 2012, we were desperately seeking the restart button in our stomachs.

We found the button on our juicer.

Juice is not our usual liquid lunch (despite the juice salad diet preaching we get from our web host K. Mikey Merrill). Anything that leaves our digestive tract as a liquid clear as vodka is not substantial enough to keep you alive (and sane) for very long. [Flashback dream harp sound effect] The first time we indulged a liquid diet was for college campus politics. It was 2001 and the U.S. was busy carpet-bombing Afghanistan and we didn’t know what else to do but to pay attention to our Islamic History professor’s speed rants, fashion makeshift protest drums out of plastic tubs, and sign a pledge to eat nothing but ice for 3 days in a sign of solidarity with the Middle East. We drank water on local cable news and laid around the quad, wasting instead of wasted. This ended, as most acts of liberal arts campus radicalism do, with us playing mean dorm room pranks on one another’s feeble, carb-starved brains, followed by a depraved taco trunk binge on our third night to celebrate our noble sense of right and wrong.

The only other time we’ve ever felt so hungry was suffering through the second day of the “Master Cleanse” during a birthday party at L.A.’s famed, red-and-white-tablecloth pizzeria Casa Bianca, meanwhile shards of the beautiful, buttery cornmeal crusted eggplant pie seemed to peck at our ocular cavities like a prison shiv. Yes, one half of Hot Knives has tried (and failed) at the Master Cleanse’s chic promise of de-toxifying your body through ritualistic lemonade drinking (you can guess which half but we’re not fessing up). You’d think chugging salt water would be right up our alley…

Keeping both these caloric deprivations in mind, this week we took a different approach to juicing our insides: a frilly meal combo of fruit nectar for breakfast and soup-like jungle juice for lunch. Did we go for weeks on this stuff? No. But we see the mental appeal of a good gut breather. Without weighing in on the science of gastro-colonic vanity, we will not begrudge (much) anyone the right to slam a tart concoction that helps you blow highlighter-colored fluid out of your body. But try this instead, it’ll right the tanker ship that is your appetite for 2012.

A.M. Juice

Our alternative to a questionable lemonade cleanser is a cornucopia of California citrus plus the earth-sugar of fresh carrot juice and spiced maple syrup. We could bathe in this stuff or pour it on cereal.

1 grapefruit
1 orange
1 mandarin
1 lemon
1 lime
1 bunch carrots, peeled (about 1 cup carrot juice)
1 tablespoon mulled maple syrup
1/2 teaspoon fleur de sel

Juice all the citrus, juice the carrots and combine with syrup and salt. Stir and drink. (If you don’t have a juicer, simply pulse the peeled carrots in a blender with some of the citrus juice and strain to remove pulp.)

Soundtrack: LCD Soundsystem,”Dance Yrself Clean”

Noon juice

Lunch beverage provides all the brainstem-tweaking flavor cues of a Thai coconut soup. Using coconut water, it’s like drinking a blood infusion with herbs.

2 cups pure coconut water
2 shoots lemongrass
1 small bulb ginger
1 sprig of mint
1 sprig of cilantro
1 sprig of Thai basil
1 small Thai chile (green)

Peel and slice the ginger, chop the chile, clean and pluck your herbs. (Keep large enough to strain later.) Combine with the coconut water in a pot. Take the lemongrass and slam hard on your cutting board to release oils. Slice into 8 long pieces and add to the pot. Bring to a boil, then turn down to simmer for 5 minutes. Remove from heat and let sit until cool. Put the juice with herbs in a jar and refrigerate overnight, or for several hours. Then strain and drink.

Soundtrack: Indian Jewelry, “Oceans”