Making your V8

Yesterday, we dealt with a whole bunch of tomatoes that needed to be, well, dealt with.  Of course there are many options when it comes to canning, or jarring which I suppose is the most correct term, but one we hadn't tried was V8 juice.  Jamie looked up a recipe online, and we were off to the races.  I realized that since it was Sept. 1st I could legitimately harvest our own horseradish, so I looked up the recipe for that too.  

Now it's always pretty much a big mistake when I try to cook two recipes at the same time.  I always seem to get the pieces/parts mixed up, and sure enough, I got the horseradish all peeled and chopped and ready to put in the food processor, and thought, "Oh I need to get the celery and onions chopped really fine too!"  And so I gleefully threw them all in, reasoning that the horseradish would chop up better if there was something for it to bounce around with.  I am such a "squirrel head" as my dad would have said.  I absolutely should NOT have put the other vegetables in with horseradish - I was preparing two things - NOT ONE!!!  So I blend it all up and then it suddenly hits me - I only need 1 Teaspoon of horseradish - not half a cup. Wow, this was a strong mixture. But I thought well, I'll add the vinegar and sugar and it will be ok.  Hmmm....well it turned out that it was OK as a separate relish that could be used with other stuff, but not part of the V8.

Anyway, I started over, got it right, and boy did the V8 turn out great.  So then this morning,  I thought we really needed to have some of this.  The reason we made the V8 was to have something to mix in our smoothies. And that's just what I did.  So here's the recipe that we really like:

a carrot - I used 2 since they weren't that big, 
a couple of cups of the V8
2 large Chard leaves
2 beet leaves
and a 1/2 of a ghost pepper
Ice cubes to get it the right thickness.

OM Gosh!  It was amazing.  I can't wait to make another one tomorrow. We are planning on winterizing our greenhouse so we can have greens year round, and now we have even a better reason to get it done!!

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