Running on JUICE!

 Day 8... We started the day with a big breakfast of Mean Green juice that Bill had made late last night.  We also made the cranberry mixture (tastes sorta like the Sonic cranberry lemonade slushie) to use as a mid morning snack since we had planned to work in the yard most of the day. The "energy" factor must be kicking in! Bill has been exercising at 11pm and I just keep going to the next project! No bad side effects to date, we just keep drinking juice whenever we get hungry. Getting curious?  Check out this video:
http://www.hulu.com/watch/289122/  Ready to start investigating for yourself? Juicing might be the answer you are looking for!

Drying fresh basil

Drying to make peppers

Things didn't go as planned today; do they ever?  The lawnmower wouldn't go more than a few feet so we went to job #2.  Bill had started some cilantro and parsley in Jiffy Peat Pots that we set out  in our herb garden.  He had also started some eggplants, more tomatoes, and zuchinni squash but we didn't have any beds left to put them in!  We decided to pull the life support from the squash which had gotten a fungus and squash borers.  Bill didn't think he sprayed enough so he pulled them all up and put them on the compost heap, sprayed the garden, aerated it a bit with a pitch fork and put the eggplants, tomatoes, and zuchinni squash in their place. Apparently, the juice is working!  While Bill worked on putting in plants, Terry laid out some basil to dry.  They're not supposed to touch, but can
be made several layers high. She also started "sun drying" some jalapenos.

Since we were on a roll, we thought we would "spruce up" the side of the house.   Bill spent the rest of the afternoon dividing all our ferns. He loves them and we have several......now we have a bunch!

"Before"

"After"

 We have already calculated and next Tuesday we will be at the half way point with our juicing.  Terry is already pulling out our "clean eating" recipes so we will not go back to any bad habits.

Until next time.....

Fancy Fruit Fly Finisher

Day 7... It's about 10 pm Friday night and I just returned from Walmart and Publix for a quick grocery run.  I'm still planning on going to the Farmer's market tomorrow, but as I peered into the fairly empty fridge, I knew we wouldn't make it.  The farmer's market still beats the price of the grocery store, (Granny Smith apples;  $1.19/lb at Farmer Browns, and $2.49 at Publix) but they don't carry stuff like baby spinach, kale, Swiss chard. Those kinds of greens are what supplies the protein.    

Gross results of Terry's fruit fly trap

Terry found a concoction on line that is a very effective fruit fly  death trap.  She mixed 2 tablespoons of red wine vinegar with a 1/2 tsp of Dawn detergent and sure enough they met their doom.  I thought I was being careful about keeping the compost lid on, but maybe not.  Maybe the pic of the fallen floaters isn't too disgusting.

Cranberry juice before stirring and enjoying

Last night I mentioned we were going to try the cranberry juice.  Using the yellow squash instead of butternut and using spinach instead of collards worked fine.  I haven't been brave enough to buy collards yet.  It seems that they would be bitter.  Before stirring, the juice was quite the work of art!

Terry has big plans for tomorrow in the yard.  I have eggplants to set out, zuchinni plants,  parsley and cilantro, and I have no idea where to put my young tomato plants, I just like seeing them sprout I think.  I bought some more squash seeds today to replace ours when they are through producing. We are almost 1/3 the way through our juice "fast" and seem to be doing fine.  We've both lost weight and haven't grown any extra appendages. More on that later! Night.

Driving by Dairy Queen....

Did Bill eat it?

Day 6....I was quite certain a Snicker Blizzard was calling my name as I drove down Ashley St. today.  It was tough, but I was on my way to return a watermelon so I would have felt pretty guilty scarfing down ice cream while returning produce (besides, Terry would have had my head)!  I was so looking forward to juicing the melon the night before but it was picked way before its time.  One of our recipes for juicing is watermelon, blueberries, and Swiss chard.

hmm...what to choose?

My favorite veggie drink (since we have to  drink 80% veggies to 20% fruit drinks) is something Terry found on the internet called Mean Green.  Its 6 kale leaves, 1 cucumber, 4 celery stalks, 2 green apples, 1/2 lemon, and a piece of ginger.  We modify it slightly since its a little too tart for us.  I leave off one of the pieces of celery and exchange one of the apples for a Golden Delicious.  Someone asked if we got hungry;  just the usual. If you ate at 6:30am, wouldn't you be hungry by 11? We just drink more juice.

The lady at Farmer Brown's asked me if juicing was hard to do.  She said she had done some juicing but couldn't find the time to continue it.  I was curious about that, unless she meant someone usually cooked and cleaned up for her.  It  takes less time to prepare, juice, and clean up the mess than normal cooking.  One of WAFT's listeners, Steve, posted a pic on Facebook of him "jumping up one morning" and doing some juicing.  We get everything from, "I would like to try that", or "I'll wait to see how it goes with you"; to my favorite - "not for me!"

I think its time for our evening snack.  Terry is not crazy about the heavy beet taste, so we'll go with the Cranberry Citrus which has cranberries, orange, apple, butternut squash ( I hope yellow crookneck works), and some kind of greens.

Our adventure continues......

Snake, Pink-eyes, and FAIL!

Good idea, wrong execution!

Day 5...of our juicing experiment.  We are winding down Day 5 of 21!  The sun is beginning to set and all has been well in the Tidwell Juice Factory, until today! We met with disaster.  The juicer we are using can't handle the amount of produce we are juicing at one time.We need to get a new juicer, and Bill wants to get a Breville,  it can handle whole fruits/vegetables and eject the pulp.  We thought we had one on Ebay but got outbid at the end.  Since the juicer wasn't doing well, we decided to go back to the Vitamixer (remember the only drawback is that it doesn't separate the pulp).  The juice came out way too thick and was just awful.  You must stick with a juicer. Lesson learned!


We're not hungry, feeling overly tired or having withdrawals. We just press on
to another day.  Bill stocked up today from the Farmer's Market with lots of great stuff. Although, I wish our tomatoes would hurry up....I can't wait to try (I mean, juice) one!

Blanched Pink-Eye peas ready for the freezer

Terry's new pet

Otherwise, on the home front we are putting up some pink eyes! And no, we're not going to juice the peas.  They are headed to the freezer!  In the square foot garden, we are fighting tomato worms and squash borers.   Now that it has quit raining, Bill will need to spray them.  Oh, and not to forget my excitement of the day.  Being dutiful, in an attempt to help Bill, I thought I would water the plants in our 10x12 greenhouse. Just as I started, a SNAKE slithered off the table and dropped right next to my foot.  HORRORS!  The snake and I headed two different directions.  We think he ate our baby birds that were in a hanging basket.  The snake had a belly full of something and our babies are gone! Grrrr


Time to juice supper....sounds weird doesn't it?! We will see!

Day 4...Macaroni and cheese, BBQ chicken, baked beans, lemon pound cake, and much more was laid out for a funeral meal today. Did I mention we were the helpers to lay out the food?! Did I feel like grabbing a fork and stuffing my mouth? well, of course!  Did we give in? Never! I almost forgot we couldn't even eat food when I was slicing a cold, crisp cucumber for the vegetable tray. Tempted? Not really.

Tonight we tried a warm, raw veggie drink in our Vitamixer. (We don't use the Vitamixer often because it leaves the pulp in.) Bill really loves the tomato based ones, I think I like the cold ones better. So the question you probably have after 4 days is, "What's the hardest part?" I'll just tell you - it's running to the bathroom all the time.  Along with our juice, we are also drinking our water, so between the two you CANNOT IMAGINE the trips we are making!

We haven't had most of the side affects others have experienced.  I was cranky yesterday and Bill had a mild headache on Sunday, but otherwise, that's it. We have only lost a couple of pounds. I keep hearing we will wake up one day to amazing energy...that hasn't happened yet.  Do I think it's good for our bodies. Yes!

BTW, Bill finished the trellis and the sweet potatoes vines are happily woven to the top. They're about six feet high. We're going crazy with tons of jalapenos, so if you have any great ideas on what to do with them, let me know! We have thrown them in the tomato based juices!


We'll keep pluggin' along! In the meantime, what will we juice with this pineapple tonight?  Let you know tomorrow!

What I'd Do For a Bowl of Chili!

The compost is even colorful and doesn't smell bad!

Day 3...What a great night for big bowl of hearty chili! How about vegetable soup? We're looking at the drizzle and realizing how much our eating is tied to our habits and associations. But Day 3 means Day 3 and we opted for a delicious mix of raw vegetables blended into a warm "soup". It didn't look as colorful as the beet mix last night, but it was still plenty hardy. I threw in tomatoes, raw onion, swiss chard, spinach, bellpepper, celery, carrots, and some fresh-from-the-garden jalapeno. I took most of the seeds out of the jalapeno so it wouldn't be so hot; Terry thought we might need more heat.  She must be the tough one.    If you're into composting, (I haven't made a real compost heap yet, I just dump and bury behind the greenhouse) then juicing is a great way to get started! Just one or two juicing sessions and we plenty of technicolor stuff for the garden.  I'm too cheap to buy the $80 composter from Sam's. Maybe my daughter will share her secret of her composter made from a large plastic storage tub.

Almost completed PVC arbor

 My project right now is making something for the sweet potato vines to climb.  I've raised acres of them when I was a teenager, and was sure they wouldn't grow more than a couple of feet;  Terry, never having done much gardening, knew they would grow big enough for a "cute" arbor.  I'm not quite finished, but all I needed was 1/2" pvc and couplings .  It took about 7 pieces of 10' pipe, 3 cross couplings, and 6 "T" couplings.  I'm sure there's a better way, but I was using what I had on hand.  My sister provided the netting.

 As we wind down this evening, we're thinking about using the watermelon I bought on the side of the road last week for a juice.  Good thing I bought two; one was not very sweet, but this one is exactly what I expect from a real Georgia watermelon!

Beet Juice......yep, we tried it!

Day 2  Looking out into our garden, I am wondering if everything is juiceable?! Bill snuck in some fresh squash into our juice last night, I never knew it! You're probably wondering, "How does it taste?", "Are you hungry?", and "How much is this costing you?"


The taste hasn't been bad at all. We tried a new recipe at lunch today that called for beets.  I think today it had an earthy flavor.  I must admit, it's the first time we ever juiced a beet or sweet potato. Our juice today was called "Sunset", and had sweet potatoes, carrots, bell pepper, beets, apples and oranges in it.  Nothing was peeled except for the oranges.  If you are still wondering about the protein, here's a list of veggies that take care of that:

BEFORE

•    Asparagus
•    Beet Greens
•    Broccoli 
•    Cabbage
•    Cauliflower
•    Collard Greens
•    Kale
•    Mustard Greens
•    Spinach
•    Swiss Chard
•    Sprouts 
•    Tomatoes
•    Turnip Greens

AFTER

We will probably try juicing most of them. As far as being hungry goes, we did well yesterday. If we get hungry, we just drink some more juice.  Some of the recipes we can juice up to 24 hours ahead.  Bill made a batch yesterday and put it in the fridge.  It is a little weird not to take something out for supper.....or to cook.  Dishes? Well, it's just the juicer, glasses and a pitcher.  Cost wise, it does cost more than a normal diet, but we're not  buying anything else or eating out. Long term, it will save on doctor bills.


So what do we do with all the free time that we usually spend cooking, eating, cleaning up the kitchen? We have a square foot garden in our backyard.  I told Bill the sweet potato vines would get LONG.  He didn't think so....my only comment will be that we are fixing to put up a homemade arch trellis from PVC pipe and netting.  I'll post a pic when he gets it done. I envision the vines running over the trellis as I walk thru and pick tomatoes. lol!

I almost ate cereal for breakfast

Day 1.....They say, "A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step."  It's easy to talk about the things we want to do, or the things we should do.  It's actually implementing them that gets us stumped.  We decided to make some changes...and if they work for us, maybe they will work for you!  

Getting healthy, haven't you tried just about everything? I know we have! Last year, Terry started using a Certified Natural Health Practitioner, Dymphna "Dee" Baudoin, (healthmattersus.com) and did a Biofeedback Assessment (more about that later). She recommended the movie that millions of people have watched, "Fat, Sick, and Nearly Dead".  That prompted us to try a 21 Day Juice fast! 

1st shopping trip

So this is our plan....we will get all of our nutrition from fruits/veggies that we juice (80% veggies/20% fruits) for the next 20 days.  We actually started today, although Bill almost grabbed the cereal box and his coffee first thing this morning.  Already the cries of, "Where's the beef?" have been heard! We'll be getting plenty of protein! 


Will it work? Will we be sick of it by day 3? Will we really feel that much different? Join us on our journey as we "Jumpstart" our way to better health! 


This is something that we are personally trying, you need to consult your physician before changing your diet.