Until relatively recently, I’ve always been less than adventurous when it comes to fruit juice. As a child I drank orange juice, as an older child I added apple juice, and for almost 30 years that was about it.

When I moved to Poland, I found that carrot juice was ubiquitous. In the UK, carrot juice was something to be found only in health food shops and at huge expense. In Poland, every supermarket devoted huge amounts of aisle space to it, and seemingly everyone drank it.

Now, I’m still not a fan of just plain old carrot juice, partially because I’m not in love with the taste, and partially because it just seems somehow too healthfoodish. In Poland though, there isn’t just plain old carrot juice, you can buy it in combination with just about every other fruit that you can think of. Not only did I start to tolerate it, I began to really like it.

At the moment I am living again in England, and just as it has always been, carrot juice being largely the preserve of health food obsessives (and Polish immigrants), has to be bought in shops that specialise in soya milk and costs a fortune. None of this goes a long way towards satisfying my carrot juice desires, so I have resorted to whipping out the old juicer and making my own.

I love the juicer, not only does it provide me with tasty and healthy drinks, but it also amuses my daughter hugely when she pushes the pushy thingy down and watches juice shoot out the side. It also has downsides, it makes the cat go psycho and it’s a complete nightmare to clean.

Anyway, the trauma of washing up isn’t the point, the point is that I’ve been using it quite a lot recently to make different juices, and most of them contain carrots.

Here are a couple of my favourite combinations, together with cheesy cocktailesque names of my own creation.

Berry Healthy

Possibly my favourite combination is equal volume of carrot juice and apple juice, with the addition of either a banana, or a handful of strawberries or raspberries. It’s also important to add a good squeeze of lemon juice, you won’t really notice the taste of it and it will stop the apple juice from oxidising and turning the whole thing a muddy brown colour. Oxidisation won’t affect the taste, but it’s nicer if your fresh juice doesn’t look like pond water.

The Carrot Top (like Ginger hair, gettit?)

This one is made up of carrot, rhubarb, and ginger, with just enough apple added to sweeten it a little. All hard ingredients to give your juicer a proper workout. It’s easy to add too much ginger and overpower all of the other flavours in this drink, so take it easy. Add just a little ginger at a time and taste inbetween. As always when working with apple juice, a squeeze of lemon juice will stop it from oxidizing and turning the whole drink brown.

Stay tuned

I’ll keep on playing with my carrots and my juicer and add more of my favourite mixes as and when I discover them.