Tell 'Em It's 'Martian Juice'

Last week at Food Thinkers, we received a tweet responding to something we posted on Twitter. It was a funny little ditty, suggesting that to get your kids to eat avocado you should tell them it’s “martian butter.”

Not a bad idea, said we. For lots of people (big and little ones), the color of our food hangs us up. That’s because we eat with our eyes long before anything gets past our mouths. And if something looks icky, chances are we’ll avoid it.

Juicing fans know that what we drink can sometimes look a little weird. Peach juice is much more brown than the peach’s orangey flesh suggests, but we drink it anyway because it’s so dang good.

This recipe features three tastes we wouldn’t recommend separately but that taste surprisingly great together … maybe even to your kids. That’s because it’s a nice departure from tomato-based vegetable juices you’d probably never get them to down. But thanks to this juice’s fun, frothy, greeny color, you might break through.

Variety is the spice of life

Fair-use warning: This juice is best suited to older kids, or kids with more advanced taste preferences. Radishes can be spicy … not jalapeño spicy; just kind of zingy. Some people think celery adds spice, too, but in this juice it acts more like a volume increaser.

This brew’s real hero is the pear. It mellows the subtle sting of your sips and makes drinking a whole glass of produce quite enjoyable. Maybe even a little addictive. And the addictiveness is precisely what drives this recipe for an oh-so-green juice that will satisfy and refresh any man, woman, child … or martian.

Pear radish celery crush

Ingredients

• 3 medium pears
• 4 radishes, trimmed
• 3 sticks celery
• 1 cup crushed ice

Instructions

1. Process pears, radishes, and celery in your juicer.
2. Scoop ice into four glasses, pour juice over, mix well to combine.