Apple Carrot Juice

I spent a beautiful three-day weekend in Carmel Valley and Monterey with my mom and Meg, our poodle Charlotte, and Meg's ultra-adorable new toy poodle puppy, Holly. We did a little consignment shopping in Carmel Valley and took a nice walk by the beach in Monterey. I also had the pleasure of spending the night at Kellsy and Nick's new apartment, and got to hang out with them and a couple other mutual friends. It was incredibly relaxing. I love weekends trips that have no agenda, no plans, just chill people and laid-back fun. I'm thinking more and more about moving to Monterey for a while. I've never lived by the beach, and every time I visit Monterey, I feel drawn to its funny little scrubby trees, its crunchy vibe, and its alluring promise of a surfing education. I want. to learn. to surf.

The only downside to my whole weekend (and last week in general) was all the heavy food I kept chowing down. I had the same amazing vegan breakfast burrito (not vegan on their menu, but vegan thanks to the patient servers) two days in a row at From Scratch, a fantastic restaurant in The Barnyard. When I got home last night, I decided to top off my holiday weekend with a generous amount of "fettucini al cashews," which is what I call my pasta with creamy cashew cheese sauce. I approximately follow a combination of these two recipes for the sauce: the Detoxinista's recipe and this recipe from tofu-n-sproutz.

So needless to say, my taste buds have been happy little campers lately, but the rest of my body has been a little whiny. I woke up feeling pretty gross this morning, and plus I'm still battling a virus from January that turned into a stage five clinger. So I decided to take a day or two off from solid foods and blast my fussy cells (that's a technical term) with some micronutrients in pure liquid form. Plus, I have an overload of produce that is desperately crying out to be used before it goes bad, and juicing makes fast work of vegetable consumption. My trusty little juicer is a Black and Decker Juice Extractor.

I have all sorts of complaints about the design of this little guy:
- The chute is way too small and what's with the kidney bean shape? I have to chop everything up into tiny pieces before juicing.
- The juice receptacle is tiny.
- The receptacle doesn't attach to the juicer, so the vibrations scoot it away from the spout, leading to juice on the counter. The solution is to hold it against the juicer with your hand, or at least keep an eye on it so you can push it back into place when it starts wandering off.

Well, that's only three complaints. The truth is, I adore this thing. I can't remember how much I paid for it when I bought it used on craigslist, but I think it was $10 or $15. I'm not sure they make this model anymore, but you can buy something equivalent for $30-$50. Here's why this juicer is great:

- It looks like a tiny elephant.
- It works just as well as the huge, heavy, three-digit-price-tag juicer I used to own, but sold, because this one is just as efficient.
- It's light and tiny, and kitchen real estate is a hot commodity.

My breakfast consisted of this stuff:

I don't normally buy baby carrots, but they jumped into my Costco cart on a day when I thought I was going to eat all the hummus on the planet. Of course, I had barely made a dent in the bag, but now it's nearly gone, thanks to my juicelephant machine. I also have a bunch of organic fujis, and I included two of them, for sweetness and fending off doctors for a total of two days. (That's how it works, right? One apple = one day without doctors?) (I don't know why I'm trying to fend off doctors. I love doctors! I love my mommy, and I love The Doctor. Maybe I should eat fewer apples! Maybe fewer apples = more visits from mommies and Time Lords!)

Anyway, I ended up with this:

but that was waaaay too pulpy for my current anti-pulp mood, so I strained it and ended up with a creamy, delicious, sweet apple carrot juice. This cup, by the way, is a great cup. I got it at Target. It's insulated, holds thirty-two ounces, and comes with a fun reusable straw. It's also easy to clean, so it's usually what I put my smoothies in when I'm headed out the door.

The reason I don't usually juice is because of the leftovers. After all the fun of shoving food into a Swirling Chamber of Juicing Doom, you have all the pulp to deal with.

So I'm usually all about the blender action: no waste, very little clean-up, and no edible guilt-tripping byproducts; but when you've got a ton of veggies to get through, for fridge reasons or health reasons or both, juicing will get you there much faster. So unless you have nerves of steel and can handle the shame of throwing away all that precious plant fiber, you have to save it and do something with it. Today, I stuck mine in a container, tossed it in the fridge, and promised it a happy future reincarnated as something yummy, like quick bread or jam or cookies.