Becoming a Juicehead

Since I'm from Jersey, I got myself a juicer. So no, I'm not becoming a juicehead like they speak of on Jersey Shore, but my friends keep calling me this in regards to me wanting to juice. It sounds kind of gross the more I talk about it.

I bought the JACK LA LANNE'S POWER JUICER a couple weeks ago and finally used it this week. I've only done three juices and it's great, but when you look at how much fruits and veggies go into one drink, it's a lot! You really need a gameplan and a long shopping list if you're going to incorporate doing this daily. And it sucks because fresh foods are expensive. I've been shopping mainly at Trader Joe's, but need to start keeping an eye out on the supermarket flyers and need to get over to the farmer's markets around me.

Here's the juicer. Doesn't it look like the one robot from Mystery Science Theater 2000K from the side? (oh wait, did they use a juicer for that robot?) I had a little trouble setting it up - I had the metal bar down and it wouldn't start. Duh, it has to snap the whole machine together. I was shocked at how quiet it is on - gets a little noisey when using harder fruits/veggies.

The first drink I made was a pear/lime/lemon combo. I had to take off the skin of the lemons and lime and the lime was super hard to do. But this was SO good. Really tart, but the pear was delicious and sweet. Plus, it had like a pear puree sitting at the top of the drink, so it was more like a smoothie than straight-up juice. It's my first time with fresh juice.

Second, I tried a veggie combo. The cucumber was kind of big, so I think it somewhat diluted the whole thing and I wasn't too keen on this. I had to add pepper!

Today, I made a fruit-based drink with some broccoli in it. Didn't taste the broccoli and I had tasted the drink before adding the second half of the cucumber and it was super sweet and good. I added strawberries (note the red stripe) and then the end of the cucumber. It got weaker tasting and wished I could have just used the cucumber pieces for the hummus I had later. I added ice and liked it better cold.

Really happy with this. I get like 2 cups from the recipes so far and was surprised. The recipes included with the juicer are cool and I have to find more online. I'm scared to try leafy veggies, but they made it seem impossible juicing carrots and that wasn't so hard.