Bustin' Out the Juicer

My friend, Kristie, gave me a Black and Decker juice machine for Christmas of 2000. I really wanted it.

I used it once, and stopped using it after I discovered it was a whole lot of work for very little gain. I have had no fresh juice between that sad attempt and this past week—when suddenly I had fresh juice three times! I had been planning to give my juicer away, when I decided that I should give it another try. I'm glad I did.

I made an early run today to the new Whole Foods in my area. They have undeniably better produce than other stores, and, since I was planning on consuming it straight up (on the rocks, actually), I wanted it to be quality stuff. I was extra proud (and crunchy) to have remembered my reusable shopping totes...which I loaded with plastic produce-filled bags...sigh... (There are options, which I will soon pursue.)


I would like to note that this juicer really does make things more difficult than necessary. You have to cut everything into almost bite-size pieces to process it—the hole is smaller than the one on my food processor! Just when I though I had everything prepared, I had to re-cut everything = annoying.


I was able to juice 3 carrots, 2 apples, a bit of ginger, and 1.5 beets—the juice looked like sherbet!


It didn't taste like sherbet, but it was very good. It was a tiny bit heavy on the beet, which gave it a very earthy taste (and a lovely staining quality). It was refreshing and lightly sweet. I need to study the new food pyramid so I can actually consider the possibility of meeting daily fruit and vegetable nutritional requirements. (According to the pyramid, this amount is 3 cups of veggies and 2 cups of fruit per day.) This is pretty exciting!