Juicing - Day 3

8:59 PM AirplaneFoodCritic 0 Comments

They say that it gets easier after the third day. And I survived the third day so Hooray for that! I had to go to the store again today because I used up the rest of my produce this morning. I should have noticed how much I spent and bought because it only lasted 2.5 days. No matter because this shopping trip was exclusively produce for my juicing. Below I am listing what I bought today:

Bag of granny smith apples
Bag of assorted red/yellow apples, oranges, tangerines
Butternut squash
Green grapes (because that is the only color they had to offer)
A single bunch of collard greens
Four bunches of organic kale
Bag of lemons
A single bunch of red leaf lettuce (I hear it has a bunch of chlorophyl and antioxidents)
A cantaloupe
A green, striped, football shaped melon that was on sale ;)
A massive papaya
A cucumber
One single zucchini
And one potted, growing planter of Wheat Grass (claims to be a super food)
Cost: $51.33

I am bummed that I couldn't get kiwis because they add a lot of flavor to mask the vegetable flavors and it isn't too citrusy.  I came home worried that I may have bought too many vegetables and not enough fruits for my taste but I made a juice with most of the ingredients that I bought and it is fantastic. Here is what I made:

2 cups red leaf lettuce
1/2 cup butternut squash
1 oz wheatgrass
1 cup green grapes
1/2 canteloupe
1 lemon
2 granny smith apples
1 orange

I juiced all the above in the juicer then poured into my VitaMix with 8 ice cubes. I pulverized the ice in the juice. That made 6 cups of juice.


The fruit-heavy ratio of vegetables to fruit make it bearable for me to drink. If you have seen the movie Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead and you are familiar with Joe Cross, you may be shaking your head at your computer screen. Joe says it is best to make a vegetable-forward ratio to fruit. Typically it is suggested to be 60:40 veggies to fruit, but I am likely just the opposite with more fruit. If YOU are cool with more veggies, then I say go for it. You just have to google Mean Green Juice (that's what Joe calls his favorite juice) and you get lots of recipes that are heavy on the veggies. One thing that is a problem with Joe's recipes is the celery. I have extremely high Blood Pressure and I am trying very hard to bring and keep it down. Celery has high levels of sodium. So, if you are suffering from Hypertension or High Blood Pressure, DO NOT USE CELERY! Oh darn, I need to read up on the high sodium foods! Cantaloupe is extremely high in sodium too, higher than celery!! Ok, this is me, learning on the spot. I will look into high sodium produce and report back.


Shopping:
I went to the store and went willy nilly. I did not have a shopping list because I didn't know what was in season or what the store was stocked with. I just tried to get even amounts of fruits and veggies. I know that every single juice I make has some greens in it so I bought a lot of kale and then I bought less amounts of collard greens and red leaf lettuce. I want to make sure I don't hate those greens before I buy a ton of it. So far, I love the red lettuce because I didn't notice it at all in my latest juicing. Apparently, melons are in season. They were everywhere in the store so I grabbed two and a papaya that was the size of a melon. Now that I have already used half a melon, I wish I had grabbed at least one more. Hopefully my green melon has less sodium than my cantaloupe. In the store, I also made sure to pick up only organic greens. I didn't have a choice on the lemons, apples and oranges but fruits with a rind like citrus fruits are not terrible for you if they are not organic because the rind and pith gets the bulk of the poisons and you throw that part away.

Learning:
Every day I learn something new. I am not an expert at this by any means but the more I learn and write down, the closer I become, right? Part of juicing is drinking water. I have to admit that I have not been doing that as much as I should. They say..(sometime I should find out who these "they"s are!)..you should drink a cup of water after every juice. The problem I am having with that is I decided to slowly drink my juice through a straw all day long so I am rarely at a point where I finish my juice. What I have done to remedy this is put the water right into my juice in the form of ice. I put 8 or so ice cubes into the ViaMix with my 5 or so cups of already juiced juice. I don't know if this is too different from drinking the water by it's self but at least I am trying! Plus, I can't stand a warm juice, or smoothie for that matter, so I adore the cold, frostiness I get from adding the pulverized ice! If you do not have a VitaMix or other machine that will turn your ice into dust, you can simply crack a few in your hand with a spoon or, even easier (and less painful), pour your juice over ice.

Feeling:
I feel pretty much the same as yesterday. I am a little slow in the brain but I am not tired physically in the least. Yesterday I managed to do a bit of exercise by flying my kite (it makes me do a bit of running around on less windy days!). Today, the most I got was shopping at Lucky's. I hope to get a bit more exercise in the next seven days. We have had house guests galore for the past week so now perhaps, it is time to use the yoga videos since I have the floor space back!


Weight Loss:
I lost 1.8 pounds since yesterday making a total of 10.8 pounds lost in three days!