Flashback Friday posts highlight popular articles from the WBK archive. Today’s blast from the past is Cold Brewed Iced (or Hot) Coffee (but also see a new bonus link at the end of this post!):
Tag Archives: drink
Raw Vegetable and Fruit Juicing At Home – Part 2
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:
Raw Vegetable and Fruit Juicing At Home – Part 1
“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.
Preserve Opened Wine Without Fancy Gizmos
Sometimes you would like a glass of wine at home… but if you are the only person imbibing, or you and your partner aren’t up for finishing an entire bottle, what do you do with the unfinished portion?
Wine stores and websites will sell you all manner of devices claiming to preserve your leftover wine via various methods of removing air from the partial bottle to prevent oxidation. These usually involve a cork replacement through which either a reverse pump sucks out the air to create a partial vacuum or an inert gas is pumped in to replace the normal air.
But the point of these gadgets is to keep the wine from being in contact with air – so all you need is an appropriately-sized bottle with an airtight closure. This is what I use: