Juicing - Part 1......The test

Well the juicer came and I of course had to open it and give it a go. It wasn't as heavy as I expected it to be. I guess I figured it was going to be heavy and cumbersome, but to my surprise it really wasn't. It was relatively light and with the exception of the main body, mostly plastic. The inside had a booklet of "recipes". I use the quotations because there was a recipe to make carrot juice. Add carrots, drink..."oh gee thanks, I would have never gotten that without the recipe book". Seriously?

I took the whole thing apart and washed it before using it. It took a little to figure out how to do that, but once I got the hang of it, piece of cake. So I decided to juice the pea pods I had just shucked, just to see how it worked and what to expect. It was loud, but its a juicer so its going to be loud. There were a lot of complaints of the how much noise juicers make, but how quiet do you really need it to be? The pods went in and this is what came out. The "green" smell with a hint of peas was really fresh smelling.

No I didn't drink it, not that brave. The color though...look at it! Its sooo vibrant! Plus I love that shade of green....very, very pretty. Now that I saw how it works, I cleaned it out with warm water and put it together for something that I was actually going to drink. I didn't make it to the fruit stand I mentioned in yesterday's post. So I looked around what I had in the kitchen, pickings were slim. I had the carrots I pulled up from the garden and some overly ripe apples. Why not? So I juiced the carrots first and the color was a nice bright orange.

Then I went back to the juicer and added in the apples. It smelled great, like fresh apple juice. However the taste was less than. =( I think that it was because they were overly ripe. Blech. So note to self, you get out what you put in. Going to get a bunch of fresh veggies and fruits today. I should have better results the second time around.

Now the pulp is actually pretty cool. Its dry and flakey, it reminds me of bonito flakes. For those who don't know, bonito flakes or Katsuobushi are dried, smoked and fermented fish. Another thing I read about juicers is some leave the pulp a bit too moist. The more moisture in the pulp, the less juice that you are actually get. So seeing how the pulp is super dry, its pretty cool.

I was going to make some of the veggie pulps into soups, but the more I think about it, probably not. With it being so dry, I'm not sure how good that would work out. So in the interim I will be composting it.

Well that's all I have for today. Will be posting Part 2's adventures tomorrow.