Posts tagged beverages

Here’s another one of my “blog about it or you’ll lose it” recipes.

I use this one as a “base” for an energy drink my husband & I take every day; we use about 2 oz of this “juice” mix, plus some supplements (each of us takes a different combo) like CoQ10, Vitamin C, d-ribose, greens mix, protein, MSM, etc.

For several years, we simply used Ocean Spray’s Cranergy Juice, but they’ve changed their recipe and their name (it’s now Cran-Energy), it’s hard to find, & I don’t like it any more (too much water, too little real juice to justify its high cost).

What we do instead is buy each of these two 96oz juice combos at Costco & then create our own watered-down juice concoction:

1. Newman’s Own 100% Grape Juice and
2. Ocean Spray “100% Juice Cranberry” (Costco’s bottle is larger than this photo’s)

Now, just FYI, pure Grape Juice is full of natural sugars and will add a high Glycemic Load to your body if you drink it “straight” (just one 8 oz glass has 39 grams of sugar), so you need to DILUTE IT if you’re drinking it for its healthy antioxidant content.

This recipe is quick & easy & will yield 60 oz. of “juice” (30 2-oz servings).

My husband DOES NOT LIKE STEVIA, so we use a liquid saccharin called Fasweet instead. Liquid saccharine is inexpensive, easy to use & a very effective sweetener.

You can use whatever low calorie sweetener you prefer (stevia, sweet n low, splenda, Superose Liquid Sweetener from Amazon), but I would not recommend sweetening this with sugar, agave nectar, or honey because of the Glycemic Load you’re creating for your body.

Keep in mind that we use this as a base for some rather bitter supplements, so if you’re mixing this to drink like juice, you can cut the amount of saccharin in half (or use even less).

To make 60 ounces “energy juice”:

2 cups Newman’s Own 100% Grape Juice
2 cups Ocean Spray 100% Juice, Cranberry
About 2 16 oz. bottles Reverse Osmosis Filtered Water (don’t use tap water–it contains too much chlorine; regular bottled water is not quite as good as “purified” RO water–but this is your call)
2 tablespoons liquid Saccharin (like Fasweet)

Mix in a clean 60 ounce juice container with a lid; shake well and refrigerate. Each set of 96 oz juice starters will make about SIX 60 oz batches of “juice.”

Salud!

—–
Kerri Elders @kerriskitchen