Happy July 4th!!

I can almost smell them!

Day 11 and Day 12.....Happy 4th of July! I'm thinking about all of you grilling hamburgers and hotdogs, or chicken and ribs, cutting into that cold delicious watermelon or churning some homemade ice cream! Yum! Isn't that part of the fun on the 4th? Fireworks, food, and family/friends! We are not caving, we are too close to the end; only 9 days to go! Bill is making a cranberry/orange/apple mixed with collards/spinach/squash drink.  At least it will be red!! We are continuing to expand our juice recipes (remember, 80% veggies and 20% fruit).

Your body?

DETOX....something about that word! When you eliminate certain foods from your diet, your body can eliminate toxins. This is especially true when you are just juicing. For most people it happens the first couple of days after you start juicing.  Because Bill and I were pretty careful about what we ate before juicing, we didn't have the common withdrawals that others have at the beginning.  Here are a few things that may happen: headache, feeling grouchy, diarrhea, constipation, trouble sleeping, feeling like you have a cold, tired, etc.  We have had a few of those symptoms over the last couple of days. Better late than  never, I guess!  It is all part of the process to better health and getting rid of the "bad stuff" in your body! Did you know your body was a garbage bucket? http://www.draxe.com/your-body-is-a-garbage-bucket/


Our journey continues....

Never in a million years will you guess!

Fresh collards -
not just for ham hocks anymore!

Day 10....YOU WILL NEVER BELIEVE WHAT WE JUICED TONIGHT!! Are you ready for this? We just juiced COLLARD GREENS! Seriously! Here's the other kicker - it didn't taste bad! I don't know what I expected it to taste like, maybe the juice after you have cooked a pot of greens all day?! Anyway, you would have never known in a million years that it was in there! Why juice them?  Well, I had seen several recipes that included collards. The benefits are Vitamin A, Vitamin C, Calcium, Vitamin K, Magnesium and helps lower the chance of developing cancer. (Collard juice recipe includes collard greens, carrots, celery, and apples. )

Celery man... "Ohhh, nooo, Mr. Bill"

We must be shocking people that we have stayed with it this long! We've gone from hearing. "You're crazy", "It won't help" to "Are you feeling better?", "How did you start?" I must say, what works for us may or may not work for you. If you have any health issues or take medication, you should juice under the supervision of a doctor. Do your research. We'll be the guinea pigs and you can see how it works on us.

Organic with a tad of salt is all I could find

 Bill has been doing a lot of work outside in the heat.  My health practitioner recommended raw unsalted sunflower seeds if he feels like he needs to chew on something. (Apparently, I haven't been working as hard, because I haven't needed them at all.) He has only eaten a few handfuls, the juice has been sufficient!

Tomorrow is the half way mark!  We'll need to start planning on what we will do when the 21 days are over.  I mean, after all this time, who wants to stuff your body with unhealthy foods. A change must take place.

Getting interested?

Day 9.....I'm sitting here on this lazy Sunday afternoon sipping a watermelon/lime juice.  Bill decided to go with a beet juice, that's still our least favorite.  I think we may need to retire that one. We were surprised at the number of folks that are following our blog.  We had no idea! Every time we turn around, someone comes up and says, "We're following you on your juicing" or "Really, how's it going?" Now, if we can just get everyone to actually click "join this site"...you know...to your right...that's it.  A simple click!

Technically, Tuesday lunch will be our half way point!  Hurrah! So to date, how's it going?
* Lost weight
*More energy
*Our bodies are getting a deserved rest
*Good discipline
*NO COOKING
*Sleeping better and needing less sleep

Bill is our resident juicer.  I find the recipes and he does the juicing....and plays....and experiments! Note the "beet" knife below. Note to self, hide knife in newspaper before CSI comes on!

Really, Bill?!

Sunday lunch

Socially, when we saw some friends at church today that we eat out with, it was like bummer, can't go. It's not that we're hungry, we are just starting to miss food and the social fellowship. Twenty one days is a small price to pay for the long term advantages.  We are actually trying to decide how to incorporate juicing on a regular basis when this 21 day experiment is over. 

Our other project right now is the square foot gardening. Since we are producing so much basil, I decided to make some pesto and try freezing it. (Pesto is basil, olive oil, pine nuts, parmesan cheese, garlic and some seasonings blended in a food processor.) Then I found this very cool link on 50 ways to use pesto: http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes-and-cooking/50-things-to-make-with-pesto/index.html
I have some jalapenos "sun drying" on the back porch to make peppers to sprinkle on pizzas, etc down the road. Our tomatoes are especially looking good!  My favorite are the zinnias on the side of Bill's greenhouse.
 

Life is rolling along for us! Yes, we are still juicing and still gardening...and learning as we go!

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!