Category Archives: Food and Drink

Raw Vegetable and Fruit Juicing At Home – Part 2

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In Part 1 I discussed pros and cons of different types of juicers. Now that I have mine, what am I doing with it?

Actually, the first thing I did was break it! My Omega arrived without a “pusher” (designed to safely push items through the somewhat narrow feed chute). The dealer immediately mailed me one, but I was impatient to start. I substituted using a plastic chopstick to push down the vegetables – but pushed too far. The result: pieces of the stick going through the auger before I could shut it off shattered the juice strainer (pictures here).

But now that I have all the necessary parts, here’s what I’m juicing:

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Raw Vegetable and Fruit Juicing At Home – Part 1

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“Juicing” (raw vegetables and fruit, not athletes on steroids!) has been a health tactic-verging-into-diet-fad for some years, and lately has gotten a lot of press. Many supermarkets now carry commercial brands of juices and smoothies, plus juice bars and shops sell everything from just-pressed juice to entire regimens of delivered juices and fasting support.

Personally I’m not big on “fasting” or “cleansing” to extremes – but I’m not great about eating enough vegetables. I also wasn’t interested in paying up to $10 for 16 ounces of juice!

About 7 years ago I bought a cheap juicer, but it was such a pain to use and clean that I put it on a shelf and eventually gave it away. Recently a Facebook friend posted about using her old but reliable Omega juicer, which got me interested in researching what machines were available and easier to use regularly. I was willing to spend more to get a better performing juicer after calculating the the cost savings if I were to have two 16-oz servings of juice per day:

2/day = 14/week – at a local juice business’ prices the cost is $133-140 per week.

vs

A $250 juicer plus $30/week in organic vegetables/fruit from Whole Foods and Trader Joe’s brings me out ahead of store-bought in just 3 weeks!

Yes, I could buy much cheaper juice products at the local grocery, but when you read the labels of those you will find they lean heavily on fruit juices and can have total sugar content the same as or higher than a can of Coke!

In this post I’ll describe the various types of juicers – a future post will cover how I’m using mine.

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Friday Faves 01-25-13

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Some fun items:

For my donation to the Indiegogo campaign for Lunar Labyrinth (still 6 days to go!) I got one of two available custom flasks. That reward point is now closed – BUT if you would like to have a nicely hand-painted steel flask, great for water or any 8 oz of liquid you might want to stash in your hip pocket (great for places that want to sell you a bottle of water for $5!)  check out John King’s site:

 

If you are wondering about what evidence, if any, exists for using a particular supplement for a specific medical use, check out this chart visualizing study results for various supplements.

 

If you don’t use a lot of data/text/voice time on your phone, or it varies so much that paying $100/month for a large amount of minutes that don’t roll over, check out Ting, who offers a plan that automatically charges you for whatever tier of service you actually use in a particular monthly period, even if you signed up for a higher tier.

 

If you like classic movies shown in old moviehouses, consider supporting Cambridge’s Brattle Theatre so that they can update their projectors (since the film distributors are going all-digital, even for old films) and their heating/cooling system: