Greedy Girl : Pumpkin Carrot Juice

“Pumpkin Everythang”

Thick, rich, creamy and sweet, the most refreshing drink to serve with a filling dinner. This pumpkin carrot juice is a take on a childhood favorite drink that I’m sure most Jamaicans will attest had an impact on their childhood. The addition of pumpkin takes our favorite drink to a new high.

It is very rare if at all to see persons juicing pumpkins to make a refreshing drink. However, If you’re a Jamaican you are no stranger to carrot juice, the one your mom used to make every Sunday to go with the rice and peas and chicken. Long before Bolthouse Farms decided that it was cool to juice carrots our mothers were doing it in our kitchens. I can’t tell you how many Sundays we would have to help peel carrots for her to make a pitcher of carrot juice for dinner. The drink is flavored with sugar, milk or condensed milk (which is the traditional way) nutmeg, cinnamon, and sometimes a dragon stout or rum (because we can never make a drink and not add rum to it).

My mother was somewhat of a purist, I call her the Original Bolthouse. We didn’t blend our carrots with water and strain it, our carrot juice was 100% juice, no water added. Some persons blended their carrots with water then strained that liquid. If you do that then you will get carrot drink, thinner in consistency and requiring too many additions to be as rich as its 100 percent juice counterpart. The 100% juice is the only way to go hence the need for a really good juicer. I can’t tell you how many we have gone through over the years.

If you came from a household with a juicer, I can almost bet your mother never juiced anything else, and even though they may have made one or two fresh fruit juices. Your juicer is permanently stained orange, because Jamaicans buy juicers to juice carrots; point blank period. So here I go (with my nuff self) to try and introduce pumpkin into the mix. I had never juiced a pumpkin ever! I initially was going to make 100% pumpkin juice in the same way my mother used to make the carrot juices. But I got scared and decided to mix the pumpkin and carrots just as some insurance that it would taste good.

The pumpkin added the deepest orange color and the flavor is super ‘pumpkiny’. It’s made perfect with the condensed milk cinnamon nutmeg and vanilla. The only thing I wish I added just to give it more of a bite was the dragon stout. I went grocery shopping and because it wasn’t on the list I forgot it. In any case the drink is heavenly with or without it. You can decide how to have your pumpkin carrot juice.