Today I followed my intended recipe (see prior post). The only other change is that I realized yesterday I used red kale, and today I used green kale. WTF is kale, anyway? What else is it used for?

Anyway, the results were much better. First, I got a lot more juice. I filled up the juice catcher to the point where it started to overflow just as I finished (oops). Second, it took a lot less time to do the actual juicing. Celery is a perfect food to juice because you can push/guide the other foods into the juicer with the stalks. Third, the actual juice is less challenging. It’s a much lighter green and tastes vaguely of V8 (that must be the celery). This batch isn’t as limey as the first was. which I guess makes sense seen I got more jucie but used the same number of limes. But it also isn’t bitter. The ginger flavor is still too subtle. So probably next time, another (or a bigger) lime and more ginger.

The downside of all this is that I can’t see myself having time to go through all this on a weekday. At best, I could juice the night before. Maybe that wouldn’t be so bad, though. I had the tail end of yesterday’s juice in the afternoon and the flavor had improved quite a lot. I guess, like a good stew, it needs time for the flavors to blend.

So, I read the Raw Food Detox Diet, and one of the staples of it is “Green Lemonade”. Suffused with an enthusiasm to detox, I ordered a juicer from Amazon. It arrived yesterday. I washed all the parts and set it up, and luckily opted to wait until today to use it because the thing is freaking NOISY. I doubt my neighbors would’ve appreciated hearing the equivalent of a lawn mower from my apartment late at night!!

So I just made my first batch of “Green Lemonade” and while I realize this isn’t going to be a very interesting post for most, I thought a record would help me, at least.

Into the juicer went:
1 head of Romaine Lettuce
5 stalks of Kale
2 small limes, whole
2 large apples, whole at first but ended up having to cut them
fresh ginger, about a 2″ chunk

Now mind you, this was a heaping big pile of produce, at least in my worldview. I ended up filling the quart juice catcher maybe half full, and lots of that was foam. I really hoped for all that, I’d have lots of juice. I can see where this could get expensive…

The juice is a dark green. Not very appealing to look at. I raised it to my mouth. The smell was of fresh cut grass (if you’ve had wheat grass juice you know what I mean). I love to smell cut grass but drinking it…well, let’s get this over with. I sipped.

The good news is that it didn’t *taste* like fresh cut grass!! It didn’t taste entirely good either, but a handful of ice cubes to chill it down improved the flavor a lot. It’s a little too bitter. Now, the recipe called for a lemon, unpeeled, and I used 2 small limes, and they weren’t very good limes at that (they’re the ones I skipped over when I was cutting wedges for my Corona!!). So probably the rind< ->juice ratio wasn’t very good. Also of course Romaine lettuce is fairly bitter, too. And I *love* the taste of ginger and it was a bit too subtle for me.

So next time I’m going to try the recipe this way:

1 head of celery (easier to clean, less bitter, and probably more juicy)
5 stalks of Kale (the juice from this stuff is almost black, its so green!)
2 better limes (at least partially peeled — I just prefer lime to lemon)
2 large apples (quartered. The juicer manufacturer brags that you can use whole apples, but mine didn’t fit, and even cut in half they jammed. Plus I was glad I cut them because the core of one to them was pretty funky and I’m really glad I cut it out.)
fresh gingers, about a 3″ chunk

I wonder how adding a cucumber would effect it? (I’m thinking of ways to maximize the juice quantity for the amount of work that goes into making the stuff.)