I love a good juice pun

I have learned

If you mix beet and blueberry juice together and spill it on something, don't bother wiping or trying to wash it. It's gone, man.

Pics of green and orange

So I got a bunch of groceries and here's what I came up with.

Start with this: Two heads of romaine lettuce, two apples, a lime and a half (I had a leftover), two cucumbers, a big bunch of cilantro, five stalks of celery. There's a bunch of spinach too, but it wouldn't fit in the bowl.

This was an unusually big batch, but that's fine. I usually don't make enough. Anyhow, that pile (without spinach) turned into this. Roughly 8-9 cups.

The problem with my juicer is it tends to shred spinach and spit it out in the pulp hopper instead of really juicing it. So for that I take the juice and mix it up in the blender with the spinach.

And when the spinach was sufficiently shredded, I ended up with this much juice/smoothie/whatever you wanna call it:

Those of you who follow this blog will know how crazy I am for carrot juice, so I couldn't deny myself a batch of that.

Underneath those carrots are two peeled oranges (here they are without the carrot canopy).

And that ended with this much carrot juice (with a tiny bit of ginger added).

On a side note, the green juice was the best I've ever made. I went through 2/3 of it tonight just because I couldn't get enough (the lime and cilantro made it irresistible). I've finally perfected that recipe and I'm going to keep using it, though I may alternate spinach with kale and bok choy. There's actually a danger of something bad happening (I forget what it is) if you just keep drinking the same green leafy stuff over and over and over, so I mix it up a bit. Never the less, I think the green juice is the hardest to get "just so" and now I think I've hit the perfect balance. I'm pleased. And full of juice.

On limes

In Canada, where I'm from, lemons don't taste that good. I can tell you this because I've been to the Caribbean where the lemons are sweet and you could eat them right off the tree. Not so up here in the Great White North. They're bitter and just plain harsh. I much prefer limes, which are also rather bitter but I like the taste more.

So tonight when I was making a big jar of carrot juice, I added three limes. I would normally add three oranges, but decided to try limes instead. I can tell you with certainty that three is too many. It was the limey-est carrot juice I've ever thought possible. Still tasty, but the only real flavor in it was lime.

That's what this blog is all about: Burning my tongue off with lime juice so you don't have to.

Chlorpropham can suck it

There and back again

As I mentioned in my previous post, I was called away suddenly and unexpectedly to Toronto for a few days. I had to leave in a hurry and it was completely impractical to take my juicer with me for a dozen reasons or more. It brought my juice fast to a rapid conclusion, but I thought I could at least survive on the standard fare you find in restaurants and whatever for a few days. Boy was I wrong.

This is a really interesting discovery for me, because you go into a juice fast with a lot of little voices in your head. Some of them lie to you and tell you that juicing will solve all your problems forever. Others tell you that you won't make it because you're weak and a slave to your cravings. And yet others tell you something that's even more disturbing: That this isn't real. That, despite that you logically piece together in your head from what you know about how food works, the whole juice fast is a stupid sham and you'll experience no real benefits or changes and you'll be embarrassed in front of all your friends when you don't drop a single pound and then go right back to eating pizza and root beer four times a day. Naturally, not all the voices you hear in your head can be telling you the truth... but there are some voices you hope are wrong more than others.

The voice which told me juicing isn't going to produce change is the really scary one. You don't want to drink carrots and beets and kale for weeks on end to find out that, when the playing field is level, your body slides right back into its old bad habits. And so, for me, it was a victory when (as I said) the absence of juice made me crave it... desperately. I found myself thinking about it constantly. I was imagining the taste of kale and cucumber in my mouth, even when I was trying to focus elsewhere. My brain was sending me constant signals telling me "I want more of what you were doing." It's not just that my body is covered in hives (it is) or that my fatigue levels are crippling (they are) or that my breath and body smell terrible (they do), but the part which makes this trip the hardest is, ironically, kind of an awesome thing to discover: I want to drink that juice. My entire body wants it. And so, as I return home today, I know that there will be no struggle when I re-enter the routine of juice fasting. Quite the contrary, in fact: My body and brain can't seem to wait.

Absence and the heart

So I had to make an unexpected and somewhat "emergency" trip to Toronto for a family matter. If there's one thing I know about this kind of trip, it's that juicing is nearly impossible. I hastily put together before I left: Two bottles of leafy green, two bottles of carrot juice, five avocados and a bunch of bananas.

And we were off.

Thing is, anyone who knows anything about juicing will tell you: This is about 12 hours' worth of nutrition. Tops. I went into this situation well aware that I was going to have to go off the wagon. But, as I mentioned elsewhere, juicing isn't like a "diet" in the typical sense of the word. It's an ongoing system of making sure you're getting nutrition. But I knew that, at some point, I'll be returning to "regular" eating (or some version of it) anyhow, so all this represented was a change in schedule. I suppose I could have brought my juicer with me, but that's asking my hosts to put up with a lot (I'm couch surfing for four nights). Keep in mind the massive amount of waste and noise and preparation and cleaning. I wouldn't ask anyone to deal with that.

So I've been "juice free" since Tuesday night. And I hate it.

My body craves juice so badly it's driving me insane. I keep eating, but I feel like what I'm eating isn't "feeding" me. The over-abundance of salt and sugar is repulsive. I also find that food is so poorly prepared: So overcooked, so stale, so burned, so much of its natural appeal whittled down to nothing by over-boiling, over-heating, sitting too long after being cooked, being frozen before cooking, or being left for hours before it ends up on a plate. 

Even the kale/green leafy concoction I whip up (which is my least favorite juice recipe) seems like it'd be a miracle elixir to me now. I can literally feel my body asking for it. I'm eating twice as much as I was (or, if you count fat/calories, way more) but I feel like only a fraction of what my body needs is entering my my mouth.

As you can imagine, this is affirming for me. You can spend a lot of time wondering if the juicing is having an effect or if there's any point to it. The changes come slowly and are subtle (especially at first) so it's hard to notice the effects. Sometimes you wonder if you're really changing anything.

And then there are times like this which stand as a very clear indicator of how just three weeks of juicing has changed what my body considers to be food. It's not just my mind anymore; my body demands something that's good for it and no longer ignores malnutrition in a sleepy, sugar/fat-induced haze.

I consider this a win.