Some recipes are about comfort.

And some are about clearing space.

This juice belongs to the second kind.

A very big part of my healing journey after becoming sick from pesticide exposure on the golf course was detoxing my body. I did a lot of detox work during those years, and much of it centered around completely changing the way I ate.

I cleaned up my diet, switched to organic foods, concentrated on whole foods and ate a tremendous amount of fresh, raw food. I used infrared saunas, homeopathic remedies, and other things along the way, but one of the biggest parts of that journey was juicing.

I juiced a lot.

There were periods when fresh juice was simply supplementing my regular diet, and there were other times when I did juice fasts and consumed nothing but fresh juices for a period of time.

I’ve probably tried just about every combination imaginable.

Carrots. Beets. Greens. Celery. Cucumbers. Citrus. Ginger. Every combination of fruits and vegetables I could fit through a juicer eventually seemed to find its way into my glass.

And after all those years, if you asked me which juices I remember most vividly, two immediately come to mind.

One is 100% pure grape juice.

And the other is this one.

Apple. Lemon. Cilantro.

Three simple ingredients.

And I absolutely love it.

When I was teaching golf outside in the hot sun for eight or ten hours a day. I can still picture myself out there with a big quart of this cold, brilliant green juice tucked into my backpack.

That color alone made me happy.

The combination of apples, fresh cilantro, and lemon creates this gorgeous vivid green, and I always tended to add extra lemon and extra cilantro because I love both of them so much.

After spending hours teaching in that heat, I would pull out my juice and practically chug it.

Nothing tasted better.

I honestly don’t remember another drink ever making me feel as refreshed and quenched as that cold juice did on those days.

And because I was drinking it during the years when I was doing so much detox work, it became much more than something that tasted good.

It became part of my healing routine.

Cilantro was one of the herbs I came to value enormously during that time, particularly for its traditional reputation as a detoxifying herb and its use in cleansing practices. Lemon is alkalinizing and brought all that brightness and freshness, while apples gave the juice its sweetness and made an enormous amount of green cilantro surprisingly easy—and delicious—to drink.

That’s one of the things I learned through all those years of juicing.

Something doesn’t have to taste medicinal to be part of your medicine.

Sometimes it can taste so good that you can’t wait to have another glass.

Nowadays, I’ve added another favorite ingredient to the mix.

Ginger.

Of course I have.

I love ginger so much that it finds its way into all sorts of things in my kitchen, and a generous piece is wonderful here. It adds that warming little bite underneath the sweet apple and bright lemon.

But the original juice was simply apples, lemons, and cilantro, and that combination is still the heart of the recipe.

Even today, I wish I could open my refrigerator every morning and find a fresh quart waiting for me.

Of course, anyone who juices regularly knows there is one small problem with that fantasy.

Someone has to clean the juicer.

Juicing is a labor of love. There is washing and chopping and feeding everything through the machine, and then there is that lovely collection of juicer parts waiting for you afterward.

But the reward is enormous.

I still juice regularly, and this is one I return to again and again because it connects the way I eat today with such an important chapter of my life.

It helped me tremendously during my detox journey, and I still think of it as one of my healing juices.

If you’re new to green juice and the amount of cilantro makes you hesitate, don’t let it.

Start with more apples.

Make it sweeter.

Use a little less cilantro the first time.

Add more lemon if you love that bright tartness the way I do. Add ginger if you want some warmth. Then, as you become accustomed to the flavor, you can keep adjusting until you’ve found your glass.

There really aren’t many rules here.

The apples bring sweetness. The lemon wakes everything up. The cilantro makes it beautifully green and unmistakably fresh.

And together, they’re remarkably delicious.

You certainly don’t need to be detoxing or trying to heal from anything to drink it. Sometimes you just want a cold, fresh juice that tastes wonderful.

But for me, this particular glass will always carry something more.

It reminds me of long days standing in the sun with my golf students.

It reminds me of that quart of brilliant green juice waiting in my backpack.

It reminds me of the years when I was working so hard to cleanse my body and heal.

And it reminds me that some of the things we discover because we need them eventually become things we keep simply because we love them.

Sweet apples.

Bright lemon.

Big handfuls of cilantro.

And nowadays, probably a rather unreasonable amount of ginger.

Fresh, alive, delicious—and for me, every bit as much a part of healing today as it was all those years ago.

This isn’t simply food that feels like medicine to me.

This is food I have used as medicine.