So- there's a whole bunch of stuff to know about juicing- like what does it actually take to turn 12 lbs of parsley into 4 oz of juice? I figured I'd share some insights and observations about how to juice repeatedly, efficiently and easily without getting irritated too badly. Oh, and I'll mention form as well.
Here's a list of things that I think it's good to keep in mind if you're going to juice. No particular order other than that's how they came to mind.
Start with a Sharp Knife
Just don't go on a fast if your knives aren't really sharp. Take them to the sharpener and have them sharpened right. No really. As a matter of fact, you should keep your knives really sharp all the time. It took me nearly 40 years to learn that the sharpness of your knives directly effects your overall quality of life. no joke. Learn how to do it yourself, just make sure it gets done somehow.
Journal
This is hypocritical of me because I've juiced who knows how many times before and this is the first time I've journaled about it. The journal is super revealing though, and good to look back on. Making a blog is fun too, but it is different than journaling because you try to think of what others might want to know rather than what you might notice. I mean you can combine them but still, the presence of an audience alters the output.
Form
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| My work space is small. practice helped me perfect it. see how perfect it is? |
Gawd only knows what kind of injuries you can get from repetitve movement, but add bad form to that and something's going to give. For me it was my right elbow. Find a good place to juice, and make sure you have a good mental handle on your space and what it's for, be it big or small. If your space is small, put all your cut fruits into bowls so they aren't rolling around your work surface getting in the way. And then the fruits go here, juicer goes there, feed with this hand from here to there, plunge with the other hand, etc etc. I've made myself a tangled mess before having a mountain of fruits around me, not able to find the measruing cup, forgetting to measure after straining, etc, just because the space was cluttered rather than filled intentionally with stuff. Once you've got that covered, stand firm in your feet and keep your core engaged, (I'm so not joking here) and be careful how you use your arms, don't let them be all floppy and loose. If you feel tweaky in any joint, give it a rest, change how you're doing things, switch hands, do something different. Consult someone other than me if you have something really painful happend.
Get as good a Juicer as you can Afford
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| This Omega juicer is the one I'm getting next |
A $100 dollar juicer is going to work ok, and better for small amounts. Look at spending between 2 and 3 hundred for a good juicer than can handle high volume and yeild maximum juice output. Do this for yourself so that you don't hate juicing. A good juicer and really make all the difference in the world and will make it more likely that you'll enjoy the experience. Have a friend who has a nice juicer? Ask to borrow it, see how it works. Lots of people go on and off using them anyway. I've got a champion, which when I bought it 14 years ago was the best non-commercial juicer. Now I'm smitten by the Omega, and will get that if the Champion ever really dies.
Listening to your juicer: No, I mean really listening
Your juicer is a machine just like you and me and it has a heart. When it starts to gag, shudder, whine, you might need to pull out. If something isn't juicing easily, if you find that you press down on the plunger really hard but the vegetable goes no where, you might need to just reasses what's going on. At that point it's instictive to press harder and force it, but that's a waste of energy. Turn the juicer off, grab a fork and fish the stubborn celery out of there, wad it up again and stick it back in. Chances are it'll go this time. When things give you resistance like this, a slow steady pressure is better than brute force. Or maybe that's just what I think because I'm not super strong, maybe if I were stronger brute force would be more effective.
Golden rule
No consuming of juice until juicer and juicing area is clean. If you are a naturally neat person you don't need this rule. Cleaning a juicer that has been sitting even just an hour is infinitly harder and more time consuming than cleaning your juicer immediatly. This is one of the only rules in the whole world that I follow without feeling a hint of resentment.
Preparation of vegetables: Everyone recommends that you wash all of your produce. I don't like to be bothered. A long time ago in a biology course I had a teacher who asked everyone "who washed their vegetables and fruits before eating them," and he tried to make the point that the pesticides don't come off. The produce we are consuming, if it's not organic and even if it is, the produce is sprayed it's whole life, fed it's whole life, cocktails and baths of fertilizers and pesticides. And then there's the whole GMO issue. You don't really wash off months of pesticides and fertilizers by running your veggies under water or even by soaking them in the lemon juice vinegar water solution recommend by so many. So I wash almost nothing, and try to benefit from the presence of trace minerals that may still be on the skins and consume the kiss marks left from where the sun fed life to the fruits.
I do wash spinach because it's sandy, and if there's visible dirt on root vegetables I scrub them. Sometimes I'll was some greens, depending, and the base of the celery stalks. Mostly I just cut and juice.
Never ever ever peel anything. You're just removing vitamins. Cantalope, Watermelon, Lemon, Lime, everything, do not peel it. I have an exception to this because I am allergic to mango skin, so I peel the skin off before I juice mango. Interesting tid bit- mango is related to poison ivy- same toxins. yah- rash on mouth- bad. I guess you might also want to peel a pomegranite too, but then again, I run poms through a citrus juicer and it handles them fine.
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| observe: carrot top removal |
I do cut the tops off of carrots, I think it's more compulsive than important. You could probably leave them on. I leave the tops on mostly everything, strawberries, beets, whatever has a top, it's probably food- juice it.
Go ahead and use whole fruits. When you are making small amounts of juice, I can totally see the value in using half a cucumber here or a quarter of a sweet potato there or whatever, but when you are making large quantities, juice the whole fruits to save yourself the trouble of wrapping left overs. Sometimes if a beet is really big I'll use half, but generally my large juices are created by grabbing, for example, a bunch of carrots, 1 beet, 1 cucumber, 2 apples, etc, not 1/2s or quarters. I think this saves time and mental space. If you're new to juicing, this is kind of a good way to begin to learn what things taste like in large amounts and in certain combinations. You make a lot and you drink it all.
What Other People think
Your friends are going to judge you: In all the ways. It's cool, that happens all the time anyway, it doesn't matter. It's one way that we all process stuff. No biggie. Now if your friends pull an intervention because you really are hurting yourself, then maybe hear them out. Not only will you be judged, but you'll find lots of people giving you advice or helpful suggestions. Like "you know juicing beets and spinach together is bad, right?" And you're like, "um, geez, that's the basis for like all of my juices for the past 15 years, am I going to die?" And then you try to do research and find out wtf is up with the beet spinach death drink? There are some combos that you're supposed to avoid, there's soo many in fact that screw it, juice whatever you want. You'll find out what works for you and what doesn't. If it gives you a belly ache don't repeat it. If it made you feel good, do it again. It's good to read as much as you can. One of my concerns was oleic acid in spinach. It's supposed to give you stones and I maybe already had one last summer, not sure, but anyway, it's a concern, a valid one. I've been told it's important to cook veggies with high oleic acid and avoid consuming them raw. OK, so what about juicing ridiculous amounts of raw veggies with high oleic contents? Am I going to die? And then I look it up and according to all of the raw foodists and juicers, oleic acid is only dangerous if you cook it. And I'm again like, wtf? Ok, hope I don't get a kidney stone, moving on. Moral of the story- what other people say or think doesn't matter, send it all through your micro computer, take what you need and burn the rest.
Smoke Pot before Juicing
When I make juice sober I'm pretty efficient and focused I git'r done. It's a nice experience. When I smoke pot and make juice, I kind of dance my way through it. I'm more likely to be listening to music I really enjoy, more likely to take my time cutting vegetables slowly, make myself laugh in thought, and much more likely to really appreciate the fruits and veggies that I'm handling. I'm just more in the moment. It takes much longer to juice when I'm high and I don't care. With all this said, be careful if you smoke pot while juicing. In the first couple of weeks I didn't smoke hardly at all, I was way to high from the fast already and pot would have made it crazy. There were days, especially in the evening, when my mind was mush and it was just the effects of the fast. I lost things over and over, would go to start a task only to start another and another and realize I'd gotten all of track. I was pretty spacey and when this feeling was happening, I honored it and did not compound it with weed.
Why do I allow myself Weed During a Fast?
This is a fast from food and toxins. Smoking weed doesn't contradict this for me.
Buy a lot of produce
You're going to go through it before it can even think about rotting. Save yourself trips to the store by buying obscene amounts of produce. People will make comments about your beautiful conveyor belt full of fruits and veggies- true story, it happens a lot.
This is taking forever
Nah, it's really not. Every juice takes between 20 minutes and an hour to make, and you get faster with experience. You learn which veggies to juice first, what exact size you need things to be cut, pressure to assert, etc. I think my average ranges around 30-45 minutes. It doesn't take longer than cooking meals generally. Citrus juices and morning juices always go faster, they are easier to cut up, simpler, and juice faster over all. I don't let myself get bothered or rushed. Always give yourself plenty of time to juice, it really helps you to maintain a healthy disposition. I like to allow myself enough time to juice at a normal speed and not get frustrated. You're doing a repetitive behavior, often 2 or 3 times a day. It can seem boring and monotonous, which is the right environment for irritated and edgy reactions to some mundane stuff. Like when the juicer is wrapped and clogged with parsley fibers and you have to take it apart to clean it half way through a juice (it happens, be cool) it can be easy to get all frustrated and swear that you're going to get another juicer and you're late and you really don't have time for this and "damn it if only you had a better juicer" and then and then. And then you're day is kind of negative and you're all irritated. If you're not rushing you can just enjoy the music that's on and rinse the juicer under water for a second and finish making your juice without any interruption in your peaceful mental space. It makes for a better day.
Make the Cuts Ahead of Time
One nice way to break up the labor of juicing is to cut up all your fruits and veggies the evening before. For example, if you know you're going to have grapefruit orange mango blackberry, slice all the grapefruits (I press all citrus, only sending lemons and limes through the masticating juicer on occasion), slice the oranges, cut the mango into slices. Put all of that in a big bowl or two big bowls and put in the fridge of cover well and leave out overnight. And do that with your evening juice too. If you're going to rinse your greens or anything else, do it now. Cut up all the beets, carrots, cabbage, broccoli, sweet potato, whatever, and put it all in a big bowl together. Throw it in the fridge or leave it out, as long as it's not too hot in your house it should be fine. And then in the morning you just have to juice and wash your juicer. I found that doing it this way allows your day to flow with less interruption and gives you a break from the repetition of juicing by lumping it all together.
Ball Jars
Ball jars are awesome for carrying your juice around. You can get 32 ounce jars with wide mouths, this makes them reall easy to clean, not to hard to lug around. I also found that bags that they make for carrying multiple bottles of wine or whatever, those are great for carrying your juices from one place to the next, especially if you're not going far. Put your juices in a fridge as soon as you get to where you're going. You want them to stay as energized and full of life as possible. If you're gong far, like 30 minutes or an hour, you may want to use a cooler to transport your juices. I typically take enough juice with me for as long as I plan to be gone and no longer.
Keeping Track of Your Juices
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| Vegetable foam- I strain it out and rinse it away. |
Talk about tedious. I had a few good arguments with myself about the value of tracking ounces and calories. I was going to quit after 10 days of it because I didn't like it. But then something happened and I kept measuring and writing. Can I just say that it's a bitch to do that after each vegetable- juice it, strain it, measure it, write it down. Juice it, strain it, measure it, write it down. Again. and. Again. I mean, when this is going on, I just try to watch the juice and see how pretty it looks when the colors bump up against each other, when the green purple and orange foams colide like froth on a latte but more like a rainbow. I know- sounds totally like I'm a gawd damn dirty hippie. Don't judge.
I actually got to a point where I'd developed a good rythm with the process and I'd started to kind of see some value in it. And now I'm almost finished and it's become a habit I can totally handle with no stress or irritation. That said, I'm not going to do that every time I make juice, but I def will on future fasts, it really adds a lot of information for one to consider for themselves, and helps others see what's going on too. It is another way to learn. You can also learn a lot if you don't keep track, so go ahead and just make juice and don't worry about it.
That was really long. Now the part about the actual juices:
Weight: 106
Energy: High
Juice #1
28 oz orange- 392
20 oz pinapple- 330
4 oz blackberry- 46
12 oz mango-138
64 oz at 906 calories
Juice #2
Left over from yesterdays juice #3
20 oz at 220 calories remains in the fridge for morning.
Juice #3
4 oz beet- 21
3 oz broccoli- 14
7 oz kale- 32
21 oz carrot- 247
14 oz apple-210
6 oz sweet potato- 71
5 oz cucumber- 53
60 oz at 648 calories
(like yesterday- I only drank half the juice and saved the other half for morning so....
Consumed 30 oz at 324 calories
114 ounces at 1450 calories
On an unrelated note I made saurkraut the other day, and can't wait to eat it with everything
7 day calorie cycle (zig-zag)
