True Blood & New Faces

Well hello there, blogosphere!

So remember how yesterday I told you I made 5 gallons of juice?

Turns out it's the most disgusting juice ever.  I think there's not enough green veggies, but my friend Rachel says it tastes like grass.  To be fair, Rachel doesn't juice so probably ALL juice would taste like grass to her...

In other news, I also wanted to poll the crowd and see if anyone has this stuff in their juice:

See at the top there's that white stuff?  I shake it up and it dissolves fine, but I want to know what it is.  Usually the entire bottom of the bottle is coated in it after the juice has had time to settle, but I had already started shaking this bottle before I thought to take a picture.  In my heart of hearts, I associate it with beets, but I have literally no reason to do so.  Plus I only put in one beet per day, so it's probably not beet.

In other news, I started watching "True Blood" this season.  I also watched the first season, but nothing in between.  I really like it - it's pretty captivating.  I've started calling this batch of (god-awful) juice "True Blood" because of the color.  And kind of also because of the texture.

So to come full circle, this batch of juice is disgusting.  And, as fate would have it, this would be the batch that I decided to make 5 gallons of.  I've started counting down the bottles.  So far I've drank two bottles of True Blood (which in hindsight maybe I should call "Nasty Blood").  That only leaves TWENTY-TWO bottles until it's gone.  To paraphrase "Finding Nemo", just keep drinking, just keep drinking....

Lastly, but not least-ly, I'd like to introduce two new faces to the blog.  Adam and Angelica from MO will be posting on here as well about their juicing experience.  Whereas I can only offer the juicing insights of a sworn bachelor, they can provide tales of what it's like to juice as a family.  As has been reiterated over and over on this blog, "juicing is a very personal journey", so it will be a great twist to hear what their journey is like, what health considerations Angelica has to take as a new mother, how they can support each other, etc..  Frankly, what I want to know is, if they cheat, do they cheat alone in a dark room when they're away from each other or do they both share in the blame of ordering the pizza together?  We're still working on getting the logistics of their posts put together, but stay tuned for exciting adventures from the South!

AND WE'RE BACK!!!!!!

Good Afternoon, Juice Universe!

Well I am back with the fire of 1000 suns!  I've been eating a LOT of crap over the last couple weeks.  My weight is up, I don't look good physically and I don't feel as GREAT as I did when I was juicing.  Being a solutions-oriented man, I searched my soul of souls for the answer, and in that oh-so quiet space I heard my answer:  go back to juicing, you big lug!

So, last night I bought some veggies and some fruits.  And a 5-gallon cooler.  I decided I was going to try making my week's worth of juice in a single sitting.  How do you like THEM apples?!

To juice for the week I needed to core TWENTY-ONE apples.  It was the worst part of the experience.  To my credit, however, I remembered to take the stickers off so I won't be getting the extra kick of fiber...

This was sort of like a journey through Hell.  One apple at a time.  After the apples were cored, I was left with this:

I've gotten smarter about my other veggie purchases.  For example, when selecting sweet potatoes at the market (which is just a classy way to say when I'm dumping an entire box of yams into my cart at Aldi), I try to find the ones that are already long and narrow so I can just throw them down the juice chute without having to prep them at all by chopping them so they're small enough to fit through.  I also managed to find beets with the greens still attached at Hy-Vee.  Not a MAJOR victory, but I'll take what I can get!  

As I was checking out at Hy-Vee, the girl said "this is the most ginger I've ever seen one person by."  I put on my best "I don't fuck around" face and just nodded.

So, after juicing for a couple hours, I ended up with this:

5 GALLONS of juice in mah fridge!!

I was sick yesterday and too tired to bottle it, so that's what I did first thing this morning:

So, everything's frozen and ready to go.  The research that I've read about freezing your juice ahead of time is that you lose certain minerals like copper.  I have never in my life kept track of my copper intake.  Like, ever.  So if I'm a little copper deficient, I'm sure my body will recover.  In the meantime, no more waking up at 5am to juice for this guy!!  

I also wanted to point something out.  Here's the nutrition value of a bag of kale (I drink one bag per day):

If there are 5.5 servings in a bag, that means every day I'm getting 50% of my calcium, 40% of my iron, etc. from this one ingredient.  Here's how much a bag of kale juices down to:

About a thumb's worth of juice.  Now add in all the other stuff I'm juicing.  For those of you that worry juicing may malnourish you, don't.  Even if I only get half the nutrients from the juice, I'm still doing fine!

Okay, that's all I've got for now.  It's good to be back "making wise choices"!!!