Meet the Juice Lady

Cherie Calbom keeps a well-stocked crisper.

Her staples are apples, oranges, carrots, cucumbers, ginger root, celery, lemons and limes. Beets and fennel bulbs are also good to have on hand. Plenty of greens, too – spinach, collards, kale, chard.

“You just can’t improve on fruits and vegetables; they’re perfect,” said Calbom, who’s known as the Juice Lady.

“Juice is a wonderful supplement,” she said. “It’s like liquid vitamins.”

This time of year, after all of the butter and bubbly of the holidays and a few weeks into resolutions to lose weight and eat better, juicing might be just what the body ordered. Despite public campaigns and conveniences such as bagged and pre-washed salad greens, most Americans still aren’t eating their vegetables. Drinking them could help people get more servings.

“Come the first week of January, your body’s going, ‘Help! I need a major overhaul here,’ ” Calbom said.

Of course, the Juice Lady encourages juicing any time of year as part of a regular regimen.

On her website, www.juiceladycherie.com, she writes, “Juicing can make it possible to reach the goal of a minimum of nine servings a day without requiring a lot of time.”

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, only about one in 10 Americans eats enough fruits and vegetables. In a report released in July 2015, CDC researchers noted less than 9 percent of Americans eat 2 to 3 cups of vegetables each day.

The news is a little better on the fruit front, but not much. About 13 percent of Americans eat 1 ½ to 2 cups of fruit each day, according to the CDC report.

“It’s a myth that it’s a lot of work,” said Calbom, who usually drinks a “big glass of green juice” for breakfast, sometimes followed by a green smoothie with avocado and raw nuts. For lunch, a bowl of soup is typical.

“I don’t eat a lot,” she said. “I don’t need a lot.”

At 60-something, Calbom said she feels better than she did in her late 20s. “That is the miracle of eating well and juicing. Juicing is so healing.”

Juiced up

Juice is best freshly pressed. “The sooner you drink it, the better,” Calbom said. “But it’s a real world we live in. People are so stressed out.”

For those without much time in the morning, she said, it’s better to press juice the night before – if you have to, in order to work it into your routine – than not to juice at all.

“Make it, and freeze it,” she said, noting Mason jars with handles work well for this – as long as they’re not filled all the way. Or, opt to refrigerate the juice, but be sure to shake it before you drink it.

“It will separate,” said Calbom, a nutritionist and author who moved to Coeur d’Alene last January.

In her kitchen, high on a hillside overlooking the lake, she shares a few recipes from her latest cookbook, “The Juice Lady’s Anti-Inflammation Diet,” co-written by Portland-based chef Abby Fammartino.

Happy Mood Morning is a cucumber-and- fennel-based green juice with apple and ginger.

“Fennel’s good for digestion, and digestion and the brain are directly connected, so it makes sense,” Calbom said.

She also likes to include extra ginger.

“What’s so cool about ginger is it’s a wonderful heart disease prevention spice.” Plus, it adds a bit of zing, something Calbom lacked in her late 20s when she was living in Southern California and eating a lot of sweets and fast and salty foods.

“I would sleep all day, 12 hours, and wake up tired. I had no energy. Doctors suggested maybe I was depressed,” she said. “I was working for (the singer) Pat Boone. I went on a double date with Kathie Lee Gifford. She wasn’t Gifford then. I was having fun.”

But she wasn’t feeling good.

At 30, “I was so sick I had to move back home to my father’s house in Colorado,” said Calbom, who stayed with her dad for the summer and changed her ways, starting with a five-day juice fast.

After that, she ate nearly nothing but vegetables – stir-fries, soups, salads – along with some brown rice. She punctuated her diet with intermittent juice fasts. And that, she said, is what healed her.

“I woke up one day and just felt brand new,” she said. “The whole process took about three months.”

She moved back to Southern California, but, she said, “I realized I could not go back to the same way of life. This is going to be my new lifestyle.”

Becoming the Juice Lady

Nearly four decades later, Calbom leads what she calls “a disciplined life,” avoiding processed sugar and carbohydrates while cooking with coconut oil, eating plenty of fruits and vegetables and, of course, juicing. She no longer battles headaches, joint pain and insomnia.

After changing her eating habits, Calbom – who was born in Seattle, grew up in Iowa and graduated from high school in Oregon – moved back to the Seattle area and got married. Eventually, she enrolled at Bastyr University, where she earned a master of science degree in nutrition. She started working for JM Marketing and its product-development arm, Trillium Health Products, which sold and promoted the Juiceman juicer. Jay Kordich, known as the “father of juicing,” was the pitchman. At that time, he was the Juiceman, and Calbom was the Juice Lady. She traveled around the country leading seminars on juicing using the Juiceman juicer.

“I went back to Iowa, where I grew up, and thought this would be the worst seminar I’d ever done because these people eat meat and potatoes and nothing else,” Calbom told the Seattle Times in 1991. “But I was surprised. They were very interested and some of them wrote me later about how they’d started juicing and lost weight or lowered their cholesterol. It’s really a good cross section of middle America that comes to our seminars.”

Calbom had collaborated with fellow Bastyr graduate Maureen Keane to write a pamphlet of juice recipes, which came with the Juiceman juicer. Around that time, a publisher approached the company, wanting to know if the firm had enough material for a book, Calbom said. She and Keane co-wrote “Juicing for Life: A Guide to the Health Benefits of Fresh Fruit and Vegetable Juicing,” published in November 1991.

“It was totally life-changing,” Calbom said. “People dream of stuff like that happening their whole life.”

Within five years, Calbom would become George Foreman’s nutritionist, appearing in the former heavyweight boxing champion’s infomercials on the home shopping network QVC to promote his grill and collaborating on “George Foreman’s Knock-Out-the-Fat Barbecue and Grilling Cookbook.” She would also go on to promote her own Juice Lady juicer.

In 2000, she and her husband moved to Colorado to be closer to a hub for nonstop connections to Germany, London, Toronto and Philadelphia. Not only was Calbom pitching products nationally, she was appearing on QVC-Germany, QVC-United Kingdom, the Shopping Channel of Canada and talk shows.

“Finally, it was too much,” said Calbom, who spent 13 years in all with QVC.

Return to roots

She moved back to the Seattle area in 2005 with her husband and continued writing books. Today, she’s working on No. 31: “The Juice Lady’s Remedies for Diabetes.” No. 30, “Sugar Knockout,” is due out Feb. 2. She’s already considering a book on fasting for 2017.

“I write at all times. I write late at night. I write on the plane. I usually pace myself in the beginning. On deadline, all I do is write and eat and sleep to get it done,” Calbom said.

She also offers online nutrition classes, such as 30-Day Detox Challenge and Jumpstart Healthy, and Health and Wellness Juice and Raw Foods Retreats, which she leads with her husband, John Calbom. A Russian Orthodox priest and inspirational speaker, he’s collaborated with his wife on several books. During retreats, he focuses on mental and emotional detox while she teaches workshops on nutrition. Their third Spokane retreat takes place in April.

“We have people come from all over the world,” John Calbom said, listing places such as Nigeria, Finland, England, Jamaica, Canada and throughout the U.S.

A native of Spokane, he attended Gonzaga University and wanted to return to his roots, prompting the couple’s move to Coeur d’Alene last January.

These days, the Juice Lady stocks up on fresh fruit and veggies at Costco and Trader Joe’s in Spokane. Her must-haves will last about a week in the refrigerator.

Calbom recommends including at least one vegetable in every juice. She suggests beginners start with carrot-apple-ginger juice.

“That’s one of my favorite bases,” said Calbom, who typically adds celery or kale or chard or cucumber, spinach, broccoli stems or radish leaves.

Those who are watching their sugar intake can still juice, Calbom said. “Doctors will tell diabetes patients, ‘You can’t have any juice,’ because of the sugar. But they can. They just can’t have fruit, except for lemon or lime.”

She suggests a concoction she calls “green lemonade,” which uses half of a lemon, a handful of favorite greens and, if desired, a bit of fresh ginger root – “to jazz it up,” the Juice Lady said.

Happy Mood Morning

From “The Juice Lady’s Anti-Inflammation Diet” by Cherie Calbom and chef Abby Fammartino

3 fennel stalks; include leaves and flowers

1/2 cucumber

1/2 green apple

Handful of spinach

1-inch piece of ginger root

Cut produce to fit your juicer’s feed tube. Juice apple first and follow with other ingredients. Stir and pour into a glass; drink as soon as possible.

Yield: 1 to 2 servings

Note: Fennel juice has been used as a traditional tonic to help the body release endorphins, the “feel good” peptides from the brain, into the bloodstream. Endorphins help to diminish anxiety and fear and generate a mood of euphoria.

Hibiscus Power Iced Tea

From “The Juice Lady’s Anti-Inflammation Diet” by Cherie Calbom and chef Abby Fammartino

“There’s a lot hibiscus can do,” Calbom said. “It shows more antioxidant powers than green tea.”

Chopped hibiscus flowers or 5 hibiscus herbal tea bags

12 mint leaves (optional)

Juice of 1 lime (optional)

2 quarts purified water

Steep hibiscus tea or flowers in water. Calbom puts it all in the refrigerator. In about an hour, you have tea. Serve over ice.

Herb and Chickpea Croquettes with Rosemary Walnut Pesto and Cider Braised Greens and Green Beans

From “The Juice Lady’s Anti-Inflammation Diet” by Cherie Calbom and chef Abby Fammartino

For the croquettes

1 1/2 cups chickpeas, cooked

1/3 cup extra-virgin olive oil, for batter

1 cup quinoa, cooked

1/2 cup shallot, diced

2 garlic cloves, minced

1/2 cup celery, diced

1/2 teaspoon dried oregano

1/2 teaspoon sea salt

1 tablespoon Dijon mustard

1 1/4 cups almond meal or gluten-free bread crumbs

1/3 cup all-purpose gluten-free flour

Coconut or grapeseed oil, for pan frying

Pulse the chickpeas and olive oil together in food processor, or mash in a bowl. Combine all ingredients in a bowl and add the mashed chickpeas and oil. Taste for flavor and let sit for 10 minutes. If dough seems dry, add more olive oil until you can easily form a ball in your hand. Form into balls no bigger than 2 inches in diameter.

Heat a pan with ¼ cup coconut oil over medium-high heat until very hot. Fry croquettes 2 minutes per side, and if needed, place on a baking sheet and finish cooking in the oven on 350 degrees until browned and crispy on the exterior but not dry, 5 to 10 minutes.

Replenish oil as needed, changing out oil if brown bits form (scrape oil into a bowl lined with a strainer so you can use the oil once more for pan frying).

For the pesto

1 bunch parsley

2 sprigs rosemary

1 clove garlic

1 cup walnuts

1/3 cup chickpeas or white miso

3/4 teaspoon sea salt, or more or less to taste

1 cup extra-virgin olive oil

Combine first 6 ingredients in food processor, slowly pouring in olive oil. Adjust flavor and consistency as desired.

Note: Add the juice of half of a lemon for an alkalizing kick.

For the braised greens

1 cup apple cider

1/4 cup coconut oil

1 teaspoon sea salt

1 head collard greens, destemmed and chopped

2 cups green beans, destemmed and chopped

1 tablespoon apple cider vinegar

Heat apple cider in a medium skillet over high heat. Allow the cider to reduce at a rapid boil for 5 minutes or until reduced by half.

Add oil and salt and stir to combine. Add collard greens, green beans and apple cider vinegar and continue to boil.

Lower heat to low and braise for 5 to 7 minutes. Taste and serve.

For more recipes, visit the Too Many Cooks blog at spokesman.com/blogs/ too-many-cooks.