A few months ago I mentioned that Stephan and I were kind of getting into juicing, and in fact, we have stuck with it! Here is an artistic-type shot of today's vegetable concoction:
I'm not one of those people who is going to tell you that juicing changed my life or that I love the taste sooooo much. In fact, the taste doesn't gross me out as much as it used to, and I'm glad I'm ingesting all of those vitamins.
I wonder, though– does drinking the juice of a bunch of vegetables mean I can skip my daily salad? This is an ongoing debate in our house. Can you get fiber from just the juice, or would you actually need to chew up some spinach, like a cow? I'm on the fence, and so is the internet.
Here are a few things I've learned from my foray into juicing:
1. Juicing is messy. I don't care what they say, juicing is a two-person job. You need someone to cut up the vegetables, someone to dispose of the mulch, someone to clean all the parts of the juicer– let's just say it's very time-consuming.
2. Cheapest things you can juice: kale, celery, carrots. I say "cheapest" because I am comparing cost to overall watery quality of the vegetable in question and juice output. Spinach is really good for you, but it costs a fortune and doesn't produce that much juice. We still use it, but not in large quantities. You can see a green layer right there in my morning juice glass, actually! Actually, I'm not a scientist, but I think what you're seeing there is apple/ celery juice, then a layer of spinach juice, then a layer of carrot juice. Drink up! I also consume the juice of one entire lemon every day, so that's also in there somewhere. Gross, right?
3. Here is the juicer we use, in case you're curious. I took a survey on Facebook, looked around Costco, and this seemed to be the one I could live with NOT using if it turned out that I hated juicing. Like I said, I don't hate it, but it is certainly messy and time-consuming. So, overall, I would consider this a perfectly valid purchase and I would recommend it highly. I could not, on the other hand, see spending $500 on a big ol' fancy juicer, because I'm in fact not one of those juicing hippies. I like it just enough for this product. Wasn't that such an awesomely enthusiastic endorsement? Just. Enough.
