ALL THAT ZAZZ

By Mary N. DiZazzo

Feed Your Face

Ciao bella,

All I've been hearing lately is "Let's do Christmas cocktails" --How about a different kind of cocktail, a fresh juice cocktail? So let's drink, let's drink some fresh juice. Cheers! All you should want for Christmas is a juicer.

Juicing is a magnificent way to nourish your body with essential vitamins and minerals. The abundance of live uncooked foods flushes your body of toxins, leaving you feeling refreshed, energized, and relaxed.

All over Europe juicing has been practiced for ages. Delicious frothy fresh vegetable and fruit juices will bring you more energy and deliver the most satisfying nutrients everyone should be getting.

So after all the holiday splurging --from nana's ricotta pie to aunty Rita's homemade lasagna, and all that torrone-- time to get on the healthy bandwagon. Clean out those clogged arteries and juice away to a healthy course of life. After all, we are what we eat!

The juicer extracts the life-giving juice from the fiber. Vegetables are the building blocks of life and when consuming them in juice form you can be reassured that you are getting nearly 100 percent of all the available nutrients, particularly the minerals.

Fruits are the revitalizers and cleansers of the body. Good for a quick pick-me-up especially first thing in the morning. By including just one glass of juice a day in your regime you can reap the benefits of this fantastic powerhouse called juicing. Just a simple glass of carrot juice is phenomenal.

Pure foods make your hair shine and your skin glow. One of my fav cocktails is called the carrot-cantaloupe cooler. IT contains the healthful benefits of beta-carotene and is great for your complexion. Ah, the cholesterol-lowering cocktail is a great mix of carrot, apple, ginger, and parsley. Another delicious fav of mine is a fennel-apple juice --great for an upset stomach. Unique flavors!

To help build your immune system and combat infections try a combo of carrot, celery, parsley, and garlic.

For nail beauty a specific combo of cucumber, carrot, kale, and green peppers will add strength and health to those tips!

Adding a juice recipe with apricots will not only furnish your body with potassium and magnesium (two minerals that give us stamina, energy, and endurance) they also contain iron for blood building and silicon for beautiful hair. A Persian poet once called the golden fruit "the seeds of the sun."

How about a cocktail of pineapple and tangerine juice? Furnishing the wonderful benefits of vitamin C for winter you can build your immune system to ward off cold and flu.

Looking forward to a summer cooler? Refreshing as all can-be is freshly juiced watermelon -- and the beach is calling us out!

No need to count sheep with this one --the nightcap cocktail of carrots, celery, and parsley. Now that you're all tucked in --nighty-night. Happy juicing

Buon Natale,

--Mary.


[Mary DiZazzo is a third-generation cosmetologist and owner/operator of Mary for Nails, etc. natural nailcare salon in Andover, Mass.and may be contacted at (978) 470-8183. She also sees select clients by appointment in Boston at (617) 742-6881.]