Juice-o-rama
I have really wanted a juicer ever since I saw "Fat, Sick, and Nearly Dead" last fall. Then in March my dad surprised me with a Breville as a belated Christmas gift (we didn't really "do" Christmas 2012 since my grandmother was in the hospital.) Victoria Moran also recommends the Breville brand in Main Street Vegan, so I knew he'd gotten me a really good one. I had my inaugural juicing session with Amiee the night before she moved me up to Boston: carrot + apple + celery, and it was yum!Since my new friend Alex loves fresh juice as much as I do, we are using it quite a bit.
Things we have learned after maybe a couple dozen juicing sessions:1. Simple is best. More than three or four ingredients and the flavors can get confused, whereas apple + carrot + ginger (use a good chunk of ginger for a real kick) or beet + plum makes for some seriously delicious juice.2. "Shit brown" juice can still taste really good. (You can, of course, predict what color the juice will turn out. That time we used rainbow chard, so red + green inevitably makes brown.)3. Buy a CRAP-TON of produce. None of it will go to waste! (And make extra, because there's always someone around who'll gladly have a glass. I'm really enjoying the social aspect of juicing.)
Apple + kale. It grows on you.
Beet + plum juice looks and tastes like melted raspberry sorbet. My favorite so far, along with carrot + apple + ginger.
...And the pulp looks like red velvet cake, but the juice is WAY tastier! The Breville comes with a perfectly designed brush-cum-scooper (that sounds vaguely filthy, but it's the most descriptive) that makes cleaning up a snap. That's the reason people buy a juicer and don't use it--only because it's too much of a P.I.T.A. to clean. Not so with this one, happily!I'll blog more about juicing over the coming months--right now I'm still experimenting, but it would be great to get to the point where I'm coming up with my own combinations and recipes (and photographing them like a quasi-professional. I need a new camera and some photography lessons!)(Most of these photos by Alex.)