JOOSE!

I bought this today.

Betty Boop approves.

According to my lovely roommate, I woke up one day (Saturday) and decided that I wanted to liquefy vegetables. I'm SO not that impulsive. I totally decided on Friday night that I wanted to liquefy vegetables.

I watched this documentary on NetFlix (while I should have probably been updating my blog) called Hungry For Change, and it was extremely interesting and enlightening. I already knew that preservatives are bad, and that fast food isn't real food, but I didn't realize that we can't even trust our staples anymore, like bread. "Oh, it's okay, I make my own bread!" I say, but of course, I can't trust the flour or sugar either.

The whole theme of the movie is that people in modern first world countries are overweight but they're actually starving themselves, because they're getting too many calories and not enough nutrients. This, of course, leads to people being constantly hungry and eating too much. Of course in between all of these healthy-assed people telling me this they're showing clips of people eating big macs and doughnuts, which led to me mowing down a bunch of peanut butter cups while watching the movie.

The rest of the movie talked about how anyone can boost their health and nutrition, and improve weight, skin, hair, every part of you. In most shows or documentaries about such things, I kick back with my bag of chips and give the TV the finger because I like to eat and nobody is going to dictate to me what I should and should not consume. I tried a diet once, I think I maybe lasted two weeks, because as soon as I tell myself that I can't have something... oh do I ever want it.

Anyway this movie surprised me, because not one of those people said to stop eating anything. They said to find organic local grown stuff, like fruits and vegetables, or if there are any farms or markets nearby that sell flour that isn't processed to shit. Then just add that into your diet. You'll be getting the nutrients that your body needs, and eventually you won't want to binge on stuff anymore because your body won't be hungry all the time. Pretty cool stuff.

And then they showed me a wonderful and fun looking contraption known as the juicer. I knew that juicers existed, but I thought they were basically blenders with a different name. I apparently need to be more observant. Juicers... wait for it... juice things. They extract the juice from fruits and vegetables and squirt it into a glass for consuming. So if you juice your daily serving of vegetables into a glass and drink it in the morning, within a half hour your body will have easily digested and absorbed it all and you'll feel awesome. So they say.

When I get something in my head, I have to do it. I'm an all or nothing kinda gal. I love vegetables and fruit, so very much. But it's hard to consume the proper amount each day, and I like to cook them, which takes out half the nutrients. And like, seriously, spinach juice? Sign me up!

So in short, (ha ha, this wasn't short at all!) I researched the crap out of every juicer in existence, and found one at Canadian Tire that is under $100 and had really great reviews. And I am going to share my juiciness with you all. ;)

Tee hee, it's called the Magic Bullet.

So after my roomie, Lisa, and I went nuts at the grocery store buying every fruit and vegetable and fresh herb imaginable, I brought this fucker home and assembled it in about 1.2 minutes. I'd also researched some juice recipes and decided to test drive this one first:

(Found on www.juicerhead.com)

Garlic V8 Juice Recipe

2 tomatoes (I used one large one)

2 cloves of peeled garlic (Again, I only used one big one)

1 handful of spinach

2 celery stalks

2 carrots

1/4 lemon (I skipped this, didn't want to taint the garlic)

1 shot of hot sauce (optional)

Tell me that doesn't make your mouth water. So I turned on the Beast (that's the juicer's new name) and tossed in the garlic. Before I could blink, it was pulp. A flutter of maniacal excitement rippled through me, like a kid just discovering that fingerpaints make way prettier pictures all over the walls of the living room. I juiced the shit of my veggies, and in less than thirty seconds I had what looked like vomit in a glass.

It tasted like a freshly squeezed caesar. (Side note: I totally just got a picture in my head of someone throwing a Roman king in a juicer. Just thought I would share.) It was so garlic-y, so tomatoe-y, ahhh, I can't even describe it. I wanted to add vodka so bad but I thought that might defeat the purpose.

At this point Lisa was pretty stoked, so she looked through the recipe book that came with the juicer while I rinsed all the parts. I read during my research travels that it's imperative to clean everything immediately after use, or else the blade parts become cemented with pulp and it's the hugest bitch to clean. This one comes with a handy little toothbrush scrubber thing specifically for cleaning the net, so it was really easy to clean. Gold star for the Magic Bullet.

Bottom right is my puke caesar.

She picked one that used five handfuls of spinach and an apple. It, too, looked like vomit, and tasted like heaven. It actually tasted like apple, but it was so good I'm never going to be able to drink store bought apple juice again. It didn't make very much juice, however, so we just started throwing shit in there. I'm pretty sure there was kale, celery, carrot, pear, and lemon, but I can't remember. It was lovely.

Our other roommate and landlord had his interest piqued and this point and decided to throw one of everything in there. It turned really cool colours due to the blackberries:

I don't even know what that looks like.

His actually tasted kinda spicy, which was weird because there was nothing spicy in it, but he did toss in half a sweet red pepper so maybe that did it? In any case, we learned that anything can be disguised. I'm pretty excited, because I hate cranberries because of their ass aftertaste, but I figure if I add enough sweet fruits to them then I'll get the benefits of the cranberries without the ass.

So, juicing is awesome. And even though greens don't produce a lot of juice, five handfuls of spinach is a pretty decent sized salad. So that two ounce shot of green is a bowl of salad's worth of nutrients in one swallow. And so yummy!

In conclusion, I'm going to be drinking at least two glasses a day of this shit, and I'd like to share the results. It's the easiest way to consume healthy shit and I'm super stoked about it. Now I'm going to celebrate with some peanut butter cups.