My new…Hobby?

Well, I have a new interest.  I know you’re not surprised.  Everyone knows that I am an “accomplisher”…I decide I want to do something, do it, and move on.  I’ve run a marathon, I’ve been skydiving, I’ve done the MS150 bike ride, I learned how to play the violin (barely), etc. etc. etc.  So now I am onto a new project.  Juicing.

I picked up a magazine a couple of weeks ago that had two articles that  interested me, one on managing thyroid disease, and one on a yeast cleanse.  In case you didn’t know, I have hypothyroidism in the form of a thyroid antibody that I manage with medication.  I also have an intestinal yeast intolerance (aka “leaky gut).

Interestingly enough, both articles mentioned juicing and juice cleanses as a way to overcome some of the side effects of the conditions.  You may know that I am not a huge fan on vegetables, I eat them very rarely.  So the idea of me drinking vegetable juice twice a day was not overly appealing.  But I decided to give it a try.  Now I am on day four and feel pretty good.  I have found that when you juice the vegetables you can consume a lot more than if were chewing them.  For example, in one glass of juice I can get kale leaves, parsley, a cucumber, 3 carrots, and an apple…definitely more than I ever at in one day before.

For the past couple of days, I have been using a juice attachment on Chris’s meat grinder which meant that I had to cut the vegetables into small pieces and occasionally have the machine “explode” and spray carrot pieces all over my kitchen.  But today I invested in this…

Let me be the first to tell you that a good juicer makes all the difference.  This one will juice whole carrots and apples, is way quieter than the other, and makes a juice with less pulp.  I am so excited!!  The juice I made tonight was not at all stressful (unlike the past three days).

So know my counter top is full of contraptions like the juicer, a blender, the old juicer, a big basket of fruit, the book “The Juice Lady’s Turbo Diet” and a dehydrator (because I’m eating veggies as snacks too!)  My refrigerator has never been this full and I bought vegetables this weekend that even the workers at HyVee didn’t know what they were (jicama and watercress to be specific).  In fact, I am still looking for a Jerusalem Artichoke.

I am totally open to tips and suggestions.  Have you tried juicing before?  What were your favorites, what worked well for you, what didn’t?  Where are the best places to get good produce in Columbia?