Juicing

One of my favorite places to go in Austin is  Daily Juice on Barton Springs Road right down from Zilker Park.  The best drink there is called The Fire Hydrant, which is a mix of beet, orange, lime jalapeno, carrot and garlic.  Check it out.

http://www.dailyjuice.org/

The only reason I ever looked this place up is because I was watching The 101’s Beauty and the Best and saw Janice Dickinson force a myriad of little juice cocktails on a model-in-training.    Instantly (as is often the case), I was intrigued.  Then, obsessed.  DH had just recently informed me that a lot of the vitamins I was counting on pumping into the kids (and myself) were cooked out if cooking temperature were raised so high.  Seemed like the answer to my prayers, right?

Rising costs of…EVERYTHING and my chaos-generating darling children prevent me from waltzing in to Daily Juice …DAILY, but then I got me an idea.

You’ve got to have heard of Jack LaLanne if you’ve been on this planet for more than 10 years.  If not, do yourself a favor and check out his site.  The man is nothing short of miraculous and has been into fitness longer than most of us have been alive.  This is one of the few infomercials that I didn’t yawn through.  Who am I kidding?  I was riveted!  I want one of these desperately!!  Can you imagine being able to get beets into your kids’ systems without the fuss of fixing them, putting them on your kids’ plates and arguing until the moment you throw them in the trash?  My husband and I often joke that we should just cut up the kids veggies and throw them in the garbage just to be able to say that we tried.

My husband does not want one more gadget on our counter, and this is understandable, considering our lack of space.  But, let me tell you, when we’re FINALLY able to go house-hunting, I will be picking a house that has ample space in the kitchen for this little baby.

And did I mention that during the infomercial LaLanne’s wife just puts WHOLE pineapples and WHOLE apples into this machine?  Key point being made here–my enthusiasm would wane, I’m convinced, if I had to core apples, picking out seeds, or if I had to slice off the outsides of pineapples.  They even put whole bunches of grapes in, too.  I know, I know.  If the machine can handle pineapple tops and seeds, obviously it can handle grape stems.  It’s worth mentioning, though, to demonstrate how little prep work is said to be required.

I want one.  I want one.  I want one.

Normally, I’m not a gadget girl, but the library has several juicing cookbooks (I guess technically juicing is not cooking.   But, that’s okay, because I’m not technical)  I want to try them all out.

And, oh baby, do I want to see what can be done with watermelon.