My Juicing Adventures

I'm a Green Smoothie girl through and through.  I love Green Smoothies - they are amazingly beneficial yet easy, inexpensive, and quick to make.  That's kind of my motto. 

I designed a 21 day Detox Program that was designed to transform people's bodies and lives. It consisted of 5 days of Raw Food, 4 days of Green Smoothies, 3 days of Juices, 4 days of Green Smoothies, and finished with 5 days of Raw Food.  In February my husband and I went through the program with my clients.  It was a wonderful experience and I learned so much, but the most life changing part of the program for me was that it made me juice for three days straight.  

I've never really liked juicing.  It takes a long time: you have to cut a bunch of stuff up and you have feed everything through the juice chute individually.  It's expensive: you need to go through a LOT of fruits and veggies to produce a LITTLE bit of juice. It is not that easy: you can juice too much of one thing and not enough of another and end up with a juice that's difficult to drink but so expensive that you cannot throw it away.  Not to mention the pulp!  Oh, the pulp.  So much to throw away and so much valuable nutrition lost.

But okay, I know juicing is amazing.  It's supercharged nutrition.  The only way to get SO much produce into you in one shot. No fiber for your body to break down, and it digests and gets absorbed quickly without taxing your body and taking valuable efforts away from detoxing/repairing/healing. 

So, in February I juiced for my husband and myself for three days.   I was blown away.  It wasn't as time consuming as I had always expected.  It was more expensive than smoothies, but I quickly learned tricks to keep my produce prices down (another blog post in the future!).  AND - I was never hungry.  That was the most life changing concept...I didn't NEED the fiber to keep me full all day long as I had assumed. 

Still....It's more work than I'm comfortable with.  For the past year I've made 128 ounces of Green Smoothie for my husband before he left for work so that he could drink all day long and stay away from all the temptations that plague him at his workplace.  I then make 64 ounces of Smoothie for myself for my breakfast or lunch.   When we got through the 21 Day Transformation, my husband requested that I make juice instead of smoothie.  He had always enjoyed juicing (and had even done a 40 day juice fast a few years ago) and wanted to get back to it.

Okay, so let's make juice!  I learned very quickly that I neither had the time or budget for 128 ounces of JUICE each morning before he left for work.  So I switched to 64 ounces of juice and 64 ounces of Green Smoothie for him.  I've been doing that ever since.  Every so often I wake up a bit later and all he gets is Green Smoothie ("all he gets"...lol). 

I inherited my husband's Breville Juicer when we got married and that's what we've been using.  It's wonderful, fantastic, amazing....but for the past month I've become discontent.  The amount of pulp I'm throwing away is abhorable. The chunks of fruit/veggies that end up in the pulp container are not okay.  The amount of produce I'm going through...well, I wonder if there is a better way.

So I started to research.  I've heard good things about Champions, Omegas, and Huroms.  I started to ask people who have them, watch demo videos, read reviews, etc. One name kept coming back to me: Hurom.

So I decided to bite the bullet and invest in a superior juicer.  My new Hurom arrived yesterday and like all new toys, I had to play with it immediately.  

The Hurom is a single auger masticating juicer - it produces extremely dry pulp and more juice through SQUEEZING the juice out. 

So I've used it three times since it has arrived.  The first was simply to play and see how it worked.  The second time was to use it just as I did the Breville and see how it compared.  The third time was again for fun to try to juice interesting and unusual things (Butternut Squash, Collard Greens, etc).

My experiences with my new juicer:

1. SO QUIET!  I was able to juice while my husband was on the phone three feet away.

2. It's so tiny!  It takes up a fraction of counterspace compared to my Breville (or my former Jack LaLane).

3.  DRY PULP! Seriously, this stuff is cool.  It comes out looking like....well, I won't say, but it's remarkable.  I'm already thinking of what I can make with it.  That was never a thought previously, but it appears easier to use and my brain is already sparking with ideas.

4.  MORE JUICE! I definitely am getting much more juice out of my produce...yaaaay!  That was the main reason I bought this new machine! Mission accomplished.

HOWEVER,  the juice isn't as smooth as the Breville. The Breville had this anti-foam screen thingy that kept the foam and such in the container as you poured out.  The Hurom could use one of those. My husband mentioned that while the juice is wonderful, he has to supress his gag reflex due to the pulpy nature of the juice.  Perhaps I'll learn to use it better with time and starting with oranges wasn't the smartest idea, but I'm a tad disappointed with that aspect.

So...now I'm a juicing girl.  I juice a little for myself and a lot for my husband, but I still think Green Smoothies to be the golden ticket. I will always share the magic of Green Smoothies and lead Green Smoothie Detox Programs, as I believe they are powerful, easy, simple, inexpesive ways to get more nutrition into your lifestyle without making any other changes.  

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The Hurom Demo Video

A Green Smoothie Recipe!