Cooking with Less Fuss, More Flavor
Bye bye, V8 juice! This healthy, homemade V4 version will blow you away.
Would you rather have your refreshing summer vegetables raw? Check out my quick and easy gazpacho recipe. Is your garden full of green tomatoes that won't have time to ripen? Turn them into my super simple, super popular salsa-like green tomato relish. Or learn how to ripen green tomatoes indoors the really easy way.
I have a sheep farmer friend who recently told me that she swears by Campbell's V8 juice when working out in the heat. She says it's more rejuvenating than drinking water or Gatorade and literally makes the difference between wanting to keel over and being able to keep going for hours.
This is the kind of stuff I need to know—especially during haying season.
But Campbell's V8 juice is mostly made from water and tomato paste, plus a frightening amount of salt. (Since you lose so much sodium while sweating, this may be part of the reason for its revitalizing abilities.) So what would be better than V8? Homemade V8!
Technically my version is only V4, but you can add more vegetables if you like. Either way, this healthy, easy to make vegetable tomato juice will blow that V8 away.
To make it, all you do is chop everything up and toss it into a pot, simmer until soupy, then put it through a food mill (I have this one and love it). It's a great way to use up overripe, imperfect, or just plain ugly tomatoes, which you can sometimes find for a deal at farmers' markets. The first time I made it I used a bunch of tomatoes from my kitchen garden that had all cracked after a recent rainstorm and needed to be dealt with immediately.
