juice casserole

So I decided to cook red beans and rice for dinner.  I made it last week but halved the recipe so I still had half an onion, half a bell pepper etc. so I wanted to use up the ingredients before they went to waste.  Well this prompted a desire to use up some other leftover veggies I had so I decided to go ahead and juice them.  Isn't the joke that casserole is just leftover everything mixed together?  Well I guess I made juice casserole.

I had some very wilted celery, soft blackberries, about 4 clementines, half a lemon, parsley, swiss chard, and some tomatoes.  You will recognize all of these things from the 3 day reboot list.  The 3 day reboot that I did over 2 weeks ago...  Yeah.  I decided the tomatoes would be a bit much but I put everything else through the juicer and hoped for the best.  Again, worst that could happen is it's terrible and I throw it away which is what would definitely happen if I left the veggies whole.

While it wasn't the prettiest thing to look at, it wasn't too bad lol.  Better than the potato juice lol.  I put it in a small glass just in case, but I have drank most of the pitcher it yielded (again I juiced the pulp- there was a LOT of soggy pulp).  It mostly tasted like celery (I did have a lot of wilted celery), but the oranges and blackberries maybe (?) gave it some sweetness that made it decent.  It was definitely a green juice like the one I had on day 1 of the reboot, but I probably enjoyed it more since 1) there was less of it, 2) I had other food on my palate, and 3) the veggies were old so the taste of the greens wasn't as strong.

Operation don't throw out any food: #success!!

Orange juice

This morning I made orange juice :o).  I had quite a few clementines left from the other weekend so I figured I'd use them before they went to waste (recall that this is how I envisioned myself using the juicer lol).  I peeled five oranges and pushed them through.  It made about 2 tablespoons (an exaggeration but still).  So I put 7 more through.  I had a decent amount of juice but the pulp seemed pretty heavy/wet, so though I said I wouldn't I had an idea about how to juice the pulp and get more juice out in a a clean way.  Juicing the pulp makes a mess because if you turn the juicer on and then dump in the pulp, the spinning basket shoots the pulp out of the juicer toward the ceiling.  Now the reason you are not supposed to put food in the juicer before turning it on is because the juicer can get "stuck" or jammed with the food.  So since the pulp is already soft I figured maybe this wouldn't be the case if I put it back through.  I poured the pulp into the chute, put the food pusher in place, and turned it on.  I got out a fair amount of additional juice (worth the extra effort) and no mess!

The juice was much sweeter than I expected, I guess because orange juice from the store probably isn't made with clementines.  But it was good; super fresh and no preservatives :o).  I don't think it has any pulp at all, but it's a little foamy at the top so I drank it using a straw.  I'm finding straws are a good thing for juicers (my neighbor uses a little mesh basket to filter out pulp and foam).

3 day reboot pt. 2

Ok so I'm on my second juice and I'm already tired of washing the Breville lol.  I am hopeful since I won't be making this much juice this close together once I incorporate juicing into my diet and thus won't have to clean it this much.  Cleaning all the parts is what makes it a pain in the ass; the only thing that's really hard to clean is the mesh basket.  I'm also nearly out of dish soap which isn't helping my annoyance lol.

My second juice included kale.  I've read that there's more to juicing leafy greens than other things.  You have to put it in with/in the middle of other juicier foods to get the most out of it.  I put in some apples then stuffed in the kale.  Then I turned the juicer on.  If you recall there were basically three rules to using the juicer but one of them is to turn the juicer on BEFORE you add food.  Oops.  I see why that matters; it took a minute to get the juice flowing.  Luckily no major damage done but lesson learned.



The juice is green so I guess I got enough juice out of the kale... I guess?

The pulp was a bit wetter than that of the first juice.  So I decided I would try juicing the pulp (which I had read about someone doing).  Yeah... that just made a mess lol.  I'm sure the amount of additional juice I gained wasn't worth it.  I don't think I'll be doing that again ha ha.

It's 2:30 pm and I am not hungry (I'm sipping on juice now).  A friend of mine started texting me about gumbo and I had to make a point not to think too hard about it lol.  Besides that doing ok.  I'm not a huge foodie anyway but as I said before I tend to crave cheese and sugar.  So far so good.  I've also been sipping on water (another thing I try to do regularly but don't), so that's probably keeping me full too.  It was my intention to run today.  I should do that soon so we will see how I'm feeling after that if I actually get out and do it.  Anyway no adverse effects so far.

Oh.  It does help that I'm at home.  I have just run a few misc. errands and I'm already behind schedule; I still haven't had "lunch."  Not sure how you could do this if you were working.  The juice is supposed to be made fresh according to the resources I've consulted.  After this weekend I envision myself drinking it in the morning and/or evening, before/after work.