Archives for December 2015

This Winter, Cold Press to Warm Up. (Recipes!)

December 3, 2015 By Jen Chase

Recipes. We gots recipes, Bees. With sprits. Oh, it’s gonna be fun.

Betcha didn’t even CONSIDER how awesome a nut milk would be all warmed up, did you. Course not. It’s Vegas. And with weather that’s more Truman Show than Polar Express, sometimes it’s hard to remember winter exists. (Don’t be hatin’, Colorado. We’re sorry about your early storms, and for so much more.)

But (hand to forehead, in gorgeously dramatic fashion)…as Las Vegans, do we not get cold?

Does our skin not sting with December air’s brisk chill like the rest of the country’s?

Do we not pine for a fire’s gentle glow…even if it’s an electric one on someone’s plasma?

Look, we can crave warmth and cuddles as much as a cat in an ice bucket. We’re human. And when we do, here’s what we do, and what we want you to do, too: Take your fave nut milk (or pick from a few choice juices) and warm ‘em the eff up. For real! Do it in 20- second increments in a microwave, or gently on the stove as you whisk your elixir to its optimum temp. You’ll fall in love with a flavor all over again in its same-yet-ante-upped state.

Pointers:

Not every cold-pressed juice flavor plays nice with heat. But if you like mulled cider and wine, or even broth, a few work better than others:

• Bee Royal rocks out when hot. Think all-natural Theraflu, and then forget about Theraflu and just concentrate on the awesomeness of drinking Bee Royal warm. Lemon can really withstand heat, so if you’re sick or just want something soothing at night, go ahead and spike your Royal or keep it G-rated by warming it up in a mug and calling it a night. (Insider Intel: To turn it into a party-worthy pseudo-hot toddy, see our recipe below the post.)

• Bee Grateful is sublime when the chill’s taken off, and if you heat it gently, you’ll maintain the nuance of the effort that Marcella and Jamie put into making the recipe. (Insider Intel: For a warm and wintry nightcap for grownups, see our recipe below for some sweetly spiced love-in-a-mug.)

…This could be you.

• And, of course, heat any of our nutmilks and you’ll achieve Confection Perfection…but don’t stop there. Bee creative! A few drops of peppermint oil (which we happen to like buying from here) in Bee Happy becomes minty hot chocolate; warmed-up Bee Legendary becomes the fastest golden milk recipe in all the land (and we alllll know how kickass turmeric is for us from what we learned last month, right?); and Bee Magnificent…well, she plays nice with others and is damn perfect on her own two feet. As every woman should be.

So, Bees. If you wanna feel like you’re insulated with kitten fur, raise your internal comfort quotient and gentlyheat these cold-pressed beauties. Don’t bee wasting time waiting for the sun to shine. Beecause even though in this neck of the woods it’ll be high in the sky come March, seize our wintry days.

Now read below and grab some ingredients to play with. And don’t forget your parka. We know you hate the cold.

The Royal Treatment

For generations, a solid hot toddy has been a go-to cap after a long, cold night…but it’s also superb if you’re under the weather. This mixture will relax a cough as much as your body, and Angostura Bitters can be excellent for soothing and upset belly. Makes one drink.

…Winter warmer or nature’s NyQuil? You bee the judge.

In a mug or heat-safe glass, add the ¼ cup of Bee Royal to 2 ounces of high-quality bourbon (High West, W.L. Weller, Blantons work well). Then, add raw local honey, one teaspoon at a time, until it hits your sweet spot. If using, top with a healthy dash of bitters. And if the drink’s cooled off too much since you started making it, microwave in 20-second increments before serving.

The Gussied-Up Grateful

There’s something special about getting dressed for the holidays, and our Bee Grateful feels the same! Accessorized in scents of allspice, cinnamon and clove, our humble little juice turns party ready on a moment’s notice with some pantry staples and super good rum. Makes one drink. (Hint: For your next soiree, buy a Singleton Six-Pack of Bee Grateful, up the proportions and keep this recipe warm in a crock pot all night long.)

In a small saucepan, combine 2 ounces of your favorite spiced rum with ¾ cup of Bee Grateful, 1/2 teaspoon of St. Elizabeth’s Allspice Dram, one cinnamon stick, one whole clove, and a healthy dash of Angostura Bitters. Heat until just under a boil, strain out the clove and serve with the cinnamon stick.

Families Who Juice: The Webbs

December 3, 2015 By Jen Chase

Is it true that a family that juices together stays together? We suppose juice may help, but if there’s one thing the Webb family doesn’t need is an extra way connect. Henderson-based Ruth and Ryan Webb’s decision to parent by example provides a strong backbone for their three young sons, and their united dedication to good health (and to incorporating juice into their sons’ Littleton lives) is why they’re our first family in the “Friends Who Juice” format.

And “family time”… in Las Vegas? It can be done and done well. You just need the right song in your heart. And these folks do.

Meet the Webbs.

The Webbs! Pictured left to right: Ruth, Ayden, Spencer, Ryan, and Emmett.

Hi!

Our family has…5 family members: Ryan (dad), Ruth (mum), Spencer (son), Ayden (son), and Emmett (son). And the names of all the people in our house who drink cold-pressed juice are…Ryan, Ruth, Spencer (age 6), and Ayden (turns 3 this December).

We used to live in…St. George, Utah, and we moved here to stay in… February 2013.

What brought our family to “Las Vegas” with our residence in Henderson was…Ryan’s job opportunity in public accounting. What has kept us here…are the career opportunities for both of us; the great restaurants and endless things to do; the warm weather; and that we love the proximity to our family in Utah along with being closer to California’s beaches and theme parks without the California taxes.

In our family’s experience, the biggest misconception about living in Las Vegas is…that the Las Vegas Strip, with its gambling and night life, seems to define Las Vegas as not being family friendly.

…Yet the thing we love most about living here is…the abundance of family-friendly activities and events. For example, our community of Inspirada has ongoing community events, three community pools and four parks. We have a pass to the Discovery Museum for hot summer days but really enjoy exploring all the wonderful outdoor parks scattered across the Las Vegas and Henderson areas.

If we had to pick a daily mantra or a quote our family tries to live by, it would be…“Forever and For Always, No Matter What.” To us this means we are in the good times and the rough times together. Spencer and Ayden especially like to round up in a family football-style huddle, put our hands together in the middle of the huddle and scream, “Team Webb!”

If we had to pick a theme song for our family, it would be…Singing in the Rain,by Gene Kelly. YouTube it and you’ll feel the fun and energy of getting through life’s challenges with a smile, some singing and [some] dancing. Everyone needs that.

Something we strive to instill in our children is…the value of each person as a child of God.

Something our parents did with us as kids that we swore we’d NEVER do (and we don’t!) is…drink a lot of soda pop.

The greatest thing about raising a family in the desert is…not having to live in the snow but still being able to travel and play in it. It is a real blessing during busy times of year at work to have weather that allows us to be able to still play outside in the evenings.

On staying a healthy family in Las Vegas...

When people ask me (Ryan) where I work and what I do, I tell them…I work for Stewart, Archibald & Barney, a local public accounting firm as a certified public accountant (CPA) performing mostly audits.

When people ask me (Ruth) where I work and what I do, I tell them…I work for Dr. Kenneth Hill, DDS, as a dental hygienist and help individuals have a confident smile.

No matter how busy we get as a family, this is what we do to make sure we eat healthy meals during the week: We plan ahead on the weekends, make a run to Trader Joe’s and Costco, and gab a few juices from TJS. We make it a point to eat packed lunches, which we fill with the right choices during the school/work week rather than eating out.

The fruit and vegetable you’ll always find in our kitchen are…apples and broccoli.

The lead-by-example things we do to teach our kids the import of good health are…letting them help us make smoothies and juice on weekends. They love picking out the fruits and vegetables and watching the whole process. We have also recently joined an athletic club that has a day care for the kids. They know that while they are playing in the kids room, we are working out. We hope this will create a workout culture in our family over the years.

(l-r): Spencer, Ryan, Ayden, Emmett, and Ruth.

The Webb family on juice…

The reason we drink cold-pressed juice is because…we know we need it for our health; plus, the more we drink it the more we have acquired a taste for it. (Some of our friends don’t believe us when we say it’s yummy!)

The reason we drink TJS’s cold-pressed juice is because…the company uses ingredients we can trust. TJS makes juicing more convenient in our busy and crazy lives. Oh yeah: We really enjoy thenut milks like Bee Happy and Bee Excellent along with the smoothies, so those really keep us coming back for more.

This is how our family incorporates cold-pressed juice into our lifestyle: The boys like watching us make juices at home, so that’s how we started. We really only have time for that on weekends. Since finding TJS, we have made it part of our family outings to do taste testing at TJS and let the boys pick a juice to bring home. Once we are home we open one at a time and all share them over the next couple days until they are gone and then we start over. We (Ryan and Ruth) will take TJS’s drinks with us to work. So that’s how we do it.

The first time our kids drank green juice…Spencer thought it was interesting and he was very curious. He started liking it very quickly. Ayden thought it was gross and we had to ease him into it, especially the ones with ginger.

The only person in our house who won’t drink green juice is… well: Emmett, of course, because he is only 6 months old.

True or false: Making juice at home is a royal pain in the butt. TRUE!

The funniest thing that ever happened to one of us while drinking juice OR when one of us was doing a juice cleanse, was…well, we won’t go there: we had one child in diapers and one potty training when we started juicing. (Need we say more?)
Our family’s advice to a newbee juicer is…to drink small amounts, often, until you acquire a taste. That combined with the way you feel as you juice and live healthy will fuel your passion for more.

(Did someone say “passion?”)

https://youtu.be/D1ZYhVpdXbQ

Is TJS Kitchen Manager Shad MacDonald Our ‘King Bee?’

December 3, 2015 By Jen Chase

Beeauty. It’s logically the first thing we seeing beeings notice about a person, but it’s decidedly not skin deep and hardly a way to judge someone. Yet a lesser soul giving TJS’s Shadrach MacDonald a sideways glance might dismiss his intricate facial tattoos (the kind worn by New Zealand’s wholehearted Māori people) as some weirdo thing that makes MacDonald something he’s not. Uneducated? Scary, maybe? A punk? Fill in the blank.

If they did judge, that lesser soul would be the loser…and not in the snarky sense, but in the truest. They’d lose out on getting to know the passion, ingenuity and heart behind MacDonald’s ink; ink he tenderly chose to face the world with to honor the people he’d met as a boy and marveled at. And it’s MacDonald’s heart that The Juice Standard (TJS) co-founder and CEO Jamie Stephenson was drawn to when they met.

“His clear eyes,” says Stephenson. “When I hired him, that’s what I saw. He’s our artist. And when I think of him, and how he works with us, I think of the word ‘synergistic.’ I’ve been working with some of the team for year, and to have the ability to have a group of people working in a 660-square-foot-kitchen—smiling and laughing—he’s just a synergistic, creative force. He’s wonderful.”

Since MacDonald manages TJS’s daily 5 a.m. juice and nut milk pressing, does that synergy go straight into your Singletons? If you beelieve that energy transmutes from one place to another—if his vibes are in our juice—we’re a lucky hive to have MacDonald among our King Bees.

Since We Opened With The Tattoos…

“I got them when I was barely 18,” says MacDonald of his tā moko tattoos. Calling the Māori some of the nicest people you’ll meet (“if you’re walking, and their door is open, they will invite you to sit at their table to eat with them”) MacDonald was a rare youth propelled toward body art to emulate, not retaliate.

With swirls, dots and lines even more pronounced than his eyes, MacDonald “practiced” being in public with facial stencils to gauge how people would react. “They’re what everyone calls a ‘job killer’,” he says lightly.

Undeterred, at Chicago’s Harold Washington College, if professorial inclination was to prejudge, it was squelched by MacDonald’s academic creds: dean’s list; Phi Theta Kappa; a major in addiction studies, and a minor in psychology.

“I’ll be the first to tell you that people judge you every day,” he says of his tattoos. But they’re not a regret. Not even close.

Talents That Surprise Behind Those Eyes

Hello…from one Renaissance man to another.

“Lots of people are surprised I’ve golfed since I was 4 and that [members] of my family are junior-pro or pro-[amateur],” shares MacDonald, who the day of this interview was enjoying quiet time at the home he shares with longtime friend and love, Rowan.

“I was a contractor for a while…a plumber, a carpenter. I’m a certified forklift operator. We owned our own bike-rebuilding company, and we turned it into [rebuilding] motorcycles and cars. It’s just one of those things where I feel guys should be able to do this stuff.”

All that Renaissance man stuff has in fact come in handy at TJS, where co-founders Stephenson and COO Marcella Williams marvel at his tackling everything from screwy plumbing to resealing floors. “Working on stuff—breaking stuff and rebuilding stuff—is pretty much what I’d rather be doing than watching TV or playing video games.”

Ask Not What TJS Can Do For You…

Along with Williams and Stephenson, MacDonald’s the guy you want in the TJS kitchen. He’s a master recipe developer who loves learning from the ladies the health bennies of different fruits and vegetables, and then tinkering with ingredients to create the new bites and sips you Bees have come to love. And from homemade kimchi and coming-soon hummus and tahini sauces to alchemizing the company’s juice pulp—ALL that pulp!—into WHealthy™ pastries and muffins, MacDonald’s previous kitchen manager/sous chef experience garnered in Chicago and California restaurants is put to delicious use, daily.

As you read this newsletter, Shad’s kimchi ferments away in a secret, undisclosed location, preparing itself to be eaten for your dining pleasure.

What Free Time?

MacDonald and Rowan prefer nights at home tinkering in the kitchen (he cooks her breakfast and lunch every day, and by night they cook together…natch) and hikes suggested by fellow avid hikers Williams and Stephenson. Whether he’s working on menus and juice recipes or playing Mr. Fixit around the store, for MacDonald, “It’s nice to have an entire group of people working [together]. It’s nice to have all of their knowledge….I am truly blessed to be a part of the TJS family.”

‘Tis The Season…to Win the Gift of Giving Juice

December 2, 2015 By Jen Chase

If there’s one thing our co-founder Jamie loves, it’s gifting; and if you’re like her, you can probably relate. To Jamie, there’s a natural high that can come from finding the most perfect just-so item that speaks something from the heart that words sometimes can’t. Maybe it’s finding that one thing you know someone already wants. Maybe it’s sheer intuition. But the fine art of mindful gifting has nothing to do with dollars and everything to do with the thought behind the act. At least that’s how Jamie rolls.

Is that how you roll? If so, The Juice Standard is giving away a double…no, a TRIPLE whammy of a gift this month by letting you win the chance to gift TJS juice to two peeps who deem improving their WHealth™ and glowing self as highly as you do. In this month’s Wake The Buzz Up! promo, we hope you’ll enter to win a Singleton Six-Pack of juice for yourself…plus two more to give away to friends. So that’s a six-pack for you, and a six-pack for two family members, two kids, two BFFS, two strangers, a friend and a stranger, two spouses (no judgment)…or whomever else in your life likes TJS juice as much as well all do.

Here are the deets, Bees. (And actually, it’s just one deet):

Visit www.WakeTheBuzzUp.com and enter the code T11Z15.

That’s pretty much it. Do that, and you’ll be automatically entered and on your way toward winning three six-packs of juice. Or, 18 bottles. Or three, one-day cleanses. Or one three-day cleanse. (‘Cause maybe you have no friends worthy of your generosity. Could happen.) Winner will be announced Dec. 21, just in time for the big ho-ho-ho.

We seriously love doing shite like this, Bees, and we know you love it, too. And if you’re a self-professed gift-giving lover, please enter and enjoy the excitement of knowing that this time, your giving will allow you to receive even more than you usually do. And that’s totally what this time of year is all about.

That, and this. Always always this.

(Got Littletons around? Grab ’em some earmuffs and enjoy this throwback, tear-up, grown-up moment.)