and scrub all surfaces. This is particularly true if you are, as we are, re-using them for juice a lot. The juice tends to stick to the glass, and you will need to wash them out with hot water as soon as you empty the jar, so as to avoid build-up of dried-on juice residue.
So, start with your clean mason jars. Fill them to the absolute brim and then seal them up tight and put them in the fridge and you are good for the next 72 hours. Or do it every other day, if that works better for you.
One of the things we do is to juice oranges, lemons and limes or any of the citrus juices separately and put that juice into a quart jar by itself. Then we make up our 12 to 16 ounce veggie juices and mix and match with the orange or citrus juices of our choice when we drink it. Remember just as with the veggie juices to keep your fruit juices full to the brim for the same reason – oxidation will spoil the juice. After you’ve used some of the citrus juice from the quart jar, transfer the remaining juice to a smaller jar which it fills completely. This will again minimize the air space on top of the juice preventing spoilage.
Just pour the veggie juice into a glass and add orange or fruit juices as desired. This is also nice because it means that each person can add as little or as much of the fruit juice to their glass of veggie juice as they like. Custom mixing.
(Right now there is a quart of fresh made orange juice and a quart of fresh made apple juice in our fridge, along with four 16 ounce jars of mixed veggie, herb and root juices.)
When we go on travel the thing we miss the most is our juicer. Even though juicing has become more popular, there are only certain cities around the country where commercial juice bars are common place. And if you can find one, expect to pay upwards of $10 for a single juice.
So, if we are traveling by car, we’ll bring along enough juice for two days in a well packed cooler. That means the cooler has a seriously full load of ice in it and we re-fill that ice if we expect to have juice the second day. It can be done. But if the cooler gets warm, or things go haywire, don’t drink the juice.
The good thing about these fresh juices is, if something has gone wrong in keeping it cool, you will not need a scientist to tell you not to drink it. You will open it and even one tiny taste will tell you – and, even if you take that tiny taste, it won’t hurt you. It just won’t taste good. Now, if you drink it anyway, I cannot tell you if it will hurt you, I’ve never been that stubborn.
Keeping Control of Your Juicing Budget
One of the trickiest things about buying fresh produce is learning how much is enough and how much is too much. Nothing puts a kink in your budget like throwing out produce that has spoiled before you get to use it; and it’s a very common experience.
As juicers, we can solve some of this problem by juicing what is on hand before it spoils, but there are some important things to know about buying and storing fresh produce nonetheless.
In the old days of small villages and local shops, people went to the green grocer a few times a week and didn’t have to worry about storing produce for any longer than a couple of days at a time. But these days, we often end up shopping only once a week, and have to plan carefully what we need in order not to run out of fresh produce and not to be throwing something away uneaten because it has spoiled.
Unfortunately, for a large majority of us, frozen and canned foods became the norm for a number of decades after the advent of flash freezing methods; particularly in the U.S. While we still purchased fresh fruits and salad vegetables, many households spent very little of their food budget in the produce aisle.
The lack of experience with shopping for fresh produce can become an obstacle in itself. We literally do not know how to store produce or even what some of it is! One of our favorite resources for produce education is Mark Mulcahy, co-host of the radio show “An Organic Conversation” which broadcasts out of San Francisco every Saturday. It is also available on the “An Organic Conversation” website and as a podcast on iTunes.
One of the interesting things we learned from listening to Mark, for instance, is that we should not wash our strawberries or other delicate berry fruits until we are ready to use them. We were very happy to learn this one, because we had lost a lot of beautiful berries, even from our own gardens, by doing it wrong. As soon as they are washed they start to break down. For instance, we would pick a nice big bowl of strawberries from the garden, bring them in and wash them. Even when stored in the fridge, by the end of the day, or early the next day, they were beginning to become mushy, and within a few days they would develop mold. What a sad fate for such beautiful fruits! Now we don’t make that mistake anymore, and our berries last quite nicely for more than several days in the fridge, because they are dry. We wash them just before we eat or juice them, and never earlier.
Another tip we learned from Mark Mulcahy was to keep our peaches and nectarines on the counter. Often when you buy peaches and nectarines, they are still hard and will need a few days to ripen. The thing is, once they start to ripen, they all ripen at once. But, as Mark pointed out, and it is completely true, once you put either of these fruits in the refrigerator they lose their amazing flavor almost instantly and it doesn’t come back. So only buy as many as you can eat in a couple of days even if they are not ripe yet, and then when they do ripen you won’t be throwing out the ones you cannot eat fast enough. Of course if you are juicing, you can juice them up and have the juice for a couple more days, so long as the juice is stored properly.
Another great idea we use every summer is to freeze whole peaches on a cookie sheet just as you would blueberries or strawberries. Wait until they are ripe but not over ripe. Lay them out on the cookie sheet on a sheet of freezer paper and freeze them solid – usually overnight is all it takes. Don’t leave them in longer than necessary to freeze solid, or they can develop freezer burn.
Once they are frozen, bag them in Ziploc® freezer bags, removing as much air as possible. A drinking straw inserted as you close the bag can be used to suck out as much air as possible as you zip the bag closed and slip the straw out. It takes a little practice to get it just right but it works like a charm once you get the knack.
This is a great way to save peaches and nectarines when the season is in full swing and prices are low. You can use them as frozen fruit desserts later in the year – and your Omega Juicer can be used to make them, too!
You can also simply remove the frozen fruits from the freezer and run them under warm water to gently thaw, and make excellent peach pies, sauces and smoothies with them.
We keep bags of whole frozen peaches, nectarines and blueberries in the freezer and pull them out for smoothies, frozen desserts, pie and muffin baking all winter and right up to the next harvest the following summer. Nothing like fresh blueberry pancakes any time you want them for a special Sunday breakfast.
The best thing about using this method of buying in season and freezing is that you have excellent additions for fresh juices all year long at bargain prices. We buy organic peaches for around 90 cents a pound in August when the crop hits full swing. Otherwise they can often run 2 to 3 dollars a pound. That’s a big savings for your budget.
If you do want to juice them after they’ve been frozen, let them thaw on the counter for a few hours. Blueberries can also be juiced this way, although you will get less juice from them than you will from fresh. We tend to use the blueberries for the frozen desserts with the juicer, rather than for fresh juice.
Juicing
