Having started juicing my greens and veggies now, and not having a compost heap close by, I found a new way to make use of the remaining fiber; after squeezing all the juice out of them. It's a shame to leave all that good stuff to waste, and since I don't eat gluten and like to find new bread substitutes and keep things raw, these fiber crackers made a wonderful bread substitute to hold my 100% veggie sandwich together!
Ingredients - all organic
2 stalks of Swish Chard
2 leaves of romaine lettuce
a handful of mixed baby romaine lettuce
a handful baby spinach
1 apple
2 stalks of large celery
1/2 a yellow bell pepper
1/2 a large cucumber
Recipe:
Cut all veggies and fruit into small enough pieces to fit in the juicer. Alternate veggies and fruit while feeding the juicer. And you are left with a healthy green juice! Filled 2 glasses to the top (glasses type photoed below before I filled it to the top).
Keep the colorful pulp for the fiber crackers. I sprinkled a very little amount of Himalayan salt into it to bring out the flavor, and next time I will definitely add a lot more spices to give it a wonderful flavor. I suppose the sky is the limit when it comes to flavoring these. I made several different sizes, just a few inches each, not knowing how they would turn out. I molded them to the shape I wanted, as in the wet form it all falls apart. I then put them in the dehydrator for 4hr at 105, and needed to leave the house at that point. It looked like they needed maybe 2 more hrs, but I wouldn't be back for 8hrs so I turned it down to 90 degrees for another 8 hrs, for a total of 12hrs. They turned out great! Light and crisp with a hint of chewy that held it together.
You can either flavor them for a snack, or use them as a bread substitute as I did, adding avocado slices, cucumber, tomato and romaine lettuce. The only thing it was missing was my raw mock-cheese spread! Made with raw cashew, red bell pepper, touch of almond milk, and spices (garlic powder, onion powder, cayenne etc.) I'll need to make some more soon.
My Juicer (Omega J8006 Nutrition Center Commercial Masticating Juicer, Black and Chrome that came with The Complete Book of Juicing by Michael T. Murray, N.D.) was $299 with free shipping on amazon. So far I love it, it's an easy-to-use masticating juicer with powerful commercial motor, low speed of 80 RPMs; no foaming, clogging, or heat build-up (keeps nutrients intact), High juice yield; auto pulp-ejection function for continuous juicin, dual-stage juicing system; quiet operation; UL- and cUL-approved.
It came with several nobs to make stuff like pasta or banana ice-cream.
All Ingredients
Filled 2 of these glasses to the very top
The very colorful pulp
Before dehydrating
After dehydrating- 4hrs at 105 degrees and 8hrs at 90 degrees (I'm sure 6-8hrs at 105 would have been good too)
Thin crisp, with enough chew to hold together
My fiber-cracker veggie sandwich contents
Sandwich before closing up
Completed sandwich
