The stupidest book I ever read.

Faint knock on the door woke me up, as usual. Apparently I sleep during delivery times.

The delivery guys are usually gone by the time I get to the door. Long gone and down the elevator because I yell quite loudly and inappropriately for an apartment building, "THANK YOU!" But nobody is seen and nobody ever answers. They're like ghosts.

Sometimes life is mysterious.

There is a thick heavy package on the carpet in front of the door. I cannot imagine what it is.

It's a book.

Forgot about that.

A book heavier than an old Webster's dictionary, heavier than a large Bible, heavier than Book of Urantia. But smaller than all of those and just as thick. Like a small fat brick.

700+ pages, I read the whole thing in 20 minutes. It would have been 10 minutes but I lingered over the artistic and well-curated photographs. It's beautiful. But stupid.

The Big Book of Juices.

Each page might as well say, "combine anything with anything."

I bought this when I bought the juicing machine. I figured I could use some ideas. I didn't know at the beginning that anything I combine will taste great so long as I use common sense.

For example, you sense intuitively that one full bundle of kale and one tiny tangerine isn't going to cut it. But two leaves of kale and two apples will. You can easily sense how to balance bitter with sweet. There are surprises but usually in the direction of sweetness.

I bought a package of colored carrots. What the heck. Why not?

Purple carrots, white ones, and one regular orange carrot.

Tonight I juiced the whole package of carrots with a few kiwi and a few Asian pears.

KaBOOOM! I just invented the sweetest vegetable drink imaginable with a faint hint of carrot. The pile of vegetables and fruit produced two 16 oz containers of juice and a load of pulp. And one of those containers of juice was dinner.

Very filling. Satisfying.

Cooking this way is fun. It goes, grind spit, grind spit, grind spit, grind spit, grind spit, grind spit, grind spit, grind spit, grind spit, grind spit, grind spit, done.

Children would have a blast doing this because the machine chews things up and poops out the pulp and pees out the juice. Come on! That's hilarious.

Each 2-page spread of the book is a fancied up photograph of the drink, an interesting tumbler, or cocktail glass, the drink, showing its viscosity, with a well-thought color scheme, a saucer, a place mat, an interesting textured surface, and a carefully cut portion of one or two of the ingredients floating on the drink, placed on the rim of the glass, or next to the glass to indicate the drink's contents by sight.

On the opposite page is the title of the drink contrived for the publication, the simple ingredients, and their supposed nutritional value rated by stars.

The book could be written by any of thusly, start with an ingredient and combine it with another, again, the same ingredient but combined with something else, and so on through all possibilities with the original ingredient, then pick another ingredient and do the same thing with various combinations, and so on until you have ten billion combinations.  

For example, at random, page 100:

#39 Greatfruit C

2 grapefruits
1 guava
1 kiwi fruit.

Not just for colds, high doses of vitamin C such as are found in this tasty drink can ward off all sorts of other illnesses and aging.

[Pfft. They all do.]

Nutrients
Beta-carotene, foic acid, vitamin C
calcium, magnesium, phosphorus,
potassium, sodium, sulphur

[Pfft. They all do.]

Energy     ★★★★☆
Detox       ★★★☆☆
Immunity ★★★★★
Digestion ☆☆☆☆☆
Skin         ★★★★☆

[Pfft. You just made that up.]

The photograph is a short stubby whiskey glass filled with pale thick off white liquid with tiny brown dots, with a green plastic straw, on a light gray bubble-wrap type surface with a wedge of grapefruit and two chunks of kiwi, altogether producing a light somewhat etherial angelic-like image. It makes you want to taste it.

What is guava, anyway?

Oh. Those things. Some are pink inside.

I'll buy some next time I see them. Probably Whole Foods or the Asian Market. 

Ok, fine. So the book is good for something. It's still stupid. It's still, "mix anything with anything." 

Lemme pick another random example.

Page 301

#161 cool 'n' creamy

1 cucumber

4 carrots

[Good grief, I thought of this the first day. Except with more things.]

Each of these juices brings out the best in the the other. You'll be surprised at just how much favor you can extract from a cucumber by juicing it,, and how delicious it is. 

Nutrients

Beta-carotene, folic acid, vitamin C,

calcium, magnesium, phosphorus

potassium, sodium, sulhur

[Pffft. See? They all have this.]

Energy        ★★☆☆☆

Detox          ★★★☆☆

Immunity    ★★☆☆☆

Digestion    ★★☆☆☆

Skin            ★★☆☆☆

[Pffft. You just made that up again. And they're rather low ratings. Should have put more things in there. ]

The photograph is gradient peach color corner to corner, the glass is short with horizontal ribs on a glass saucer, pink straw, three thin translucent cucumber slices floating along the inside rim as icebergs, three carrots carefully arranged as stacked logs out of focus behind the glass.  

The food stylist and the photographer are both very good.

The whole book is like this. 405 such 2-page vignettes. Very rainbow-y book. 

I'll have to look more closely to see how 405 2-page vignettes can fit into 728 pages with other introductory material and references and index, but that's modern publishing for you. Miracles happen!

This book is for people who don't like to read. 

None of the juices would be prepared as photographed, every little piece of fruit or vegetable would be juiced, not used for decorating. Juicing is functional, not artistic. You go b-r-r-r-r-r-a-p, done, drink, not b-r-r-r-r-r-a-p, done, decorate, contrive a lovely background, photograph, drink. 

Let's do another one. One last vignette. Page 587 #335

Vanilla Peach. 

3 peaches

1 banana

1/2 teaspoon vanilla essence

5 tablespoons natural yogurt

8 tablespoons pineapple juice

They're good alone, but most fruits blend well with a banana, the ultimate smoothie fruit.

[Bananas cannot be juiced, this recipe would be for a blender, not a juicer. ]

Nutrients

beta-carotene, folic acid, vitamins B1, 

B3, B6 and C,; calcium magnesium,

phosphorus, potassium, sodiu, 

sulphur, zinc, protein

[Finally, something different.]

Energy         ★★★★☆

Detox           ★☆☆☆☆

Immunity     ★★★☆☆

Digestion     ★★★★☆

Skin             ★★☆☆☆

[Pffft. You just made that up.]

Photograph is gradient white to light green corner to corner. Glass is short fat etched, liquid is gradient pink to light tan, with 3 apparent apple wedges clustered on top opposite a green plastic straw. 

Who uses a straw? And apple isn't in the recipe, they must be peach wedges but no coloring where the pit would be removed. 

This sounds really good. But it's not a recipe for a juicer. So then, the book covers blender smoothies and juices. 

I don't see any recipe with alcohol, but all of these could bastardized to harden and get you drunk. In fact, all you'd have to do is let them ferment. 

"I bought a juicer and accidentally became alcoholic!" 

On Amazon the book is rated 4.5 stars by 853 reviewers. 2% of reviewer gave 2 stars. 

Prices on Amazon range from $3.53 to $99.90 .

Here, let me show the thickness of this book. Off to Photoshop. Brb.

What do the lowest reviewers say?

* This book is garbage. If you know anything abut juicing you will hate it. The vegetable based juices all call for either cucumber or carrot, and maybe 2 other ingredients. There are maybe three recipes that call for greens. Where are the green juices? Kale, spinach, chard, etc. You won't find them. If you want mediocre fruit concoctions, you might find value in this, but even then, you'd be better off using google.

* Returned. Silly recipes that can be figured out on your own.

* Not that helpful. Pinterest has more recipes

* I would send back if they didn't charge me to send it back, HALF OF WHAT THE BOOK COST! All the recipes you can find online and half of them are only 3-4 items AND gross. 😕 DISSAPOINTED!!

 * I am really disappointed this book does not offer nutritional information. I regret getting it

* ... if you need to know how many calories and/or carbs are in the drinks because that information is not provided. Other juice books do give this information and it's crucial because many juices contain, in one drink, my allotment of carbs for two entire days. Because this book lacks that information, it's completely useless to me.

* This book was not as expected and had no measurements included to make juices.

* old spiral format preferred. its more handy to bring around, easier to open and read through the pages.

* Glad I didn't speand the $40 on the hardback version.

* Whoever designed the size of this book should have it inserted. It's a great book for fruits but light on

receipes for veggies.

My main objection is WHY ON EARTH would they design it so small (approx 6 1/2" x 7 1/2" x 2") and get this, it weighs approx. 3 lbs.????? It's impossible to find a place for it. I get the idea of "THE BIG BOOK" design but utility should have been considered before a selling gimmick. It's also hard to read due to it's size. Because it's a paperback and sooooo thick I doubt the binding will last long either.

* It's a thick book with quality color photos unfortunately the recipes are short and don't have much information. E.g. put 2 oranges and carrot in your juicer to make a breakfast juice. Gee I could kind of figure that out on my own. If you are looking for interesting combinations or combinations to offer nutrition for specific medical conditions your not going to find it here. But it is a pretty book. Very disappointed in the lack of information. Waste of money.

* WOW!!! I could have just downloaded recipes from a free cooking site. The recipes are very basic and not really helpful. I knew how to make these recipes without needed this book. Most of the recipes have about 3 ingredients in them. The book is too fat, too heavy, and very very hard to put in a cookbook stand.

* This book is basically a big picture book. The pretty, full color, full page pictures dominate the book. The amount of helpful information could have been written on three pages.

Other reviews are too stupid to copy/paste.