Daniel’s Tangy Mexican Green Juice

It doesn’t have to feel like green juice homework.

I recently tried the Hardcore Greens bottled juice at Erewhon and I couldn’t finish it. Clearly there’s a market for torturous green juices. But you can have a concentrated boost of greens and fruits for a healthful diet, if you’re into that, without it tasting like green gasoline.

Greens are leafy, friendly, fun foods that should bring joy in any form, just like chocolate or cotton candy but with the exact opposite in nutritional value. And this is how I take mine: a tangy Mexican-style jugo verde that contains greens along with seasonal green fruits, herbs, a few watery vegetables and fresh citrus juice.

Most of your time here is spent on trimming and slicing. (I feed all my organic raw food trimmings to my boisterous composting system.) The only nonnegotiable ingredient is the Opuntia cactus, or prickly pear cactus paddle. You can get it in Latin supermarkets like Northgate and Vallarta, or at many corner stores with produce or carnicerías. Increasingly, some mainstream markets sell cactus as well. Look for raw, de-thorned paddles; sometimes the nopal is sold sliced.

Some notes:

Avoid: For this recipe, do not use the darkest, toughest leafy greens, like kale or chard. Do not use lettuce. Do not use cooked or pickled nopales, only raw. Do not use any non-green stems or seeds.

Storing: Store in jars in coolest part of your refrigerator for up to three days. Do not freeze.