as all of this was going on, we began growing our own barley grass and adding that to the juices as well. It is very green and very sharp (green) tasting, but if you don’t get too crazy with it, it is a great balancer to sweeter fruits and vegetables and it is incredibly good for you.
I still preferred my parsley, but my husband is crazy for barley grass, so I relented.
The lessons here are simple: don’t ignore the directions, but don’t take them as gospel either. Be willing to experiment within reason. Obviously, if something doesn’t fit into the juicing chute, we cut it smaller until it does, but that is really as far as we go. The other lesson? Remember that you are doing something new and don’t let yourself get stuck in a rut because you figure out how to do one thing and then never remember to keep trying new things!
Trust me, the more you experiment with your juicer, the happier and more amazed you will be at what it can do and how delicious your new creative inventions can be.
Oh, and speaking of inventions, there’s another thing I never did – I never read a juicing recipe until after I had been juicing a few years.
And when I did I was appalled. Who are these people and why do they juice one apple, two carrots and one half a ‘beet root’? Personally, if I’m going to juice and drink a juice I make, I want a good 12 ounces or even 16 ounces of juice. I do not count the individual vegetables I juice. I grab a handful of everything, wash it, trim it, and juice it – oh and then I drink it. Just sayin’.
The other thing about this ‘juice recipe’ thing is that so many of the recipes call for 1/2 this, or 1/2 that – well, I don’t need a bunch of half things in my fridge getting spoiled. I know I am normally juicing for two people, but a lot of us are living with at least one other person in our household, so juice accordingly.
When I juice beets, I juice the number of beets in the bunch I bought – usually three. I don’t always juice the beet greens, but if I do, I juice them all. Sometimes they are pretty wilted and sad looking, in which case I chop them up and give them to my chickens. If they are gorgeous and firm and yummy, I either juice them or make a salad out of them or do some of both.
One thing I have learned over the years of juicing is that nothing wilts and spoils faster than handfuls of greens left over from juicing sessions – so just juice it – or eat it for lunch in a salad – but don’t try to put it away for tomorrow or later in the week. Later in the week it will not be the gorgeous produce it is today. Experience has taught me to make those choices for the best and freshest right now and assume anything left over will be wasted if I don’t prepare it, eat it or cook it today.
That is one of the reasons a garden is so amazing. You can go out and pick off exactly the number of kale leaves you want, or chard leaves, or cucumbers, or whatever it is and leave the rest of it all there, still attached to its root mass, still growing, and it will be right there waiting for you tomorrow. At least until the frost comes, but that’s another story for another day. For today, just keep playing around with every juicing experience.
And don’t expect to get enough juice from one stalk of celery to do much of anything. Buy it by the bunch and use it by the handful of stalks. It’s cheap, even organic, and it’s incredibly good for you and will give you energy all day.
Working Out Your Juicing Schedule – How to Juice when Time is short and Days are long
One of the decisions you have to make once you start juicing is whether you will juice every day (or every time you want a fresh juice) or if you are willing to juice and put some of that juice in the refrigerator for later use. It’s not a huge decision, but you may find it has a large impact on how often you are having fresh juice.
For us, the answer was and is a moving compromise. There are some weeks when we juice every time we want fresh juice, which is usually every day. But there are other weeks when we juice and store juices in the fridge and only juice two or three times in a week.
There is no question, and I want to be very clear on this, that juices that have just been made are amazing and delicious and beyond anything in the world. There is also no question that a juice you made yesterday is really absolutely incredible even if it is not quite as amazing as the fresh one you made yesterday – and that if you had not made it yesterday you would not be drinking it today. Life is full of compromises and choices.
In the world of juicing, it is possible to juice today and drink juice tomorrow and even the next day if that is what it takes to get the job done. It’s not perfect, but it is really pretty close.
Time to Juice: What it takes
When planning a single juicing session for fresh juice to drink now for 1-2 people, you will generally need to budget 15-20 minutes for prep time and juicing, and an additional 10-15 minutes for cleanup. This is a generous time budget, but take your time, especially in the beginning. Unless you’re a sous chef, you probably haven’t spent a great deal of time preparing produce with a sharp knife. Give yourself time to get the hang of it.
When juicing for multiple days for more than one person, plan to double that amount of time, or approximately one hour from start to finish.
Be sure to read “Specific Instructions for Preparing Your Produce for Juicing” found later in this book in the chapter "Selecting and Preparing Your Produce for Juicing". In general, all produce should be trimmed and then washed before juicing.
Proper Storage of Juice for later Consumption
There are some strict caveats and guidelines if you are going to juice and store, and you need to know what they are, so you avoid wasting precious fresh fruits and vegetables and time by improperly storing (and thereby ruining) your juices.
The first rule goes back to oxidation; remember only masticating juicers can be used for making juice which can be stored. Additionally, any juice you are going to drink later must be properly sealed and stored in a cold place. Preferably a working refrigerator, but a well-insulated and well-loaded ice chest will do on travel or in a pinch.
The second part of avoiding oxidation of your juices has to do with how full you fill the containers you are storing them in. Each container must be full to the very tippy top. No air space. It must be so full, in fact, that when you open it, you are guaranteed to spill some. That full. No exceptions.
Our solution is to use 12 or 16 ounce mason jars and to use the plastic lids to seal them. (Admittedly, just as in the case of our chopping carrots, it took us a while to figure this out – at first we used the sealing canning jar lids. But we eventually got smart and picked up a few packages of the white plastic mason jar lids and have never looked back. For one thing, you can wash them and re-use them. And, while you can technically re-use the canning jar lids if you are not actually canning with them, they get cruddy and grungy all too soon and you don’t WANT to re-use them. So, just start with the white plastic lids and you’ll be far happier.)
The jars must be REALLY clean. You do not have to sterilize them as you would for canning, because they will only hold the juice for one to three days maximum. Right, did you get that? Three days maximum. If you haven’t taken the juice out and drunk it up in three days then you will be forced to take it out and dump it in the compost. You will know, too, because when you taste it, it will scream “YOU MISSED MY DEADLINE!” and you will not be able to drink it. Trust me on this.
So, run the jars through the
