Why'd It Have To Be Green?

Have you ever heard of "juicing"?  No, not the kind of juicing that Barry Bonds was accused of - this is of the food variety.  You take perfectly good fruits and vegetables, throw them into a special blender called a juicer that has enough torque to run a John Deere Bulldozer, and in the end you have juice made only of the fruit and/or vegetables that you used.  Nothing other than 100% juice.  And, depending on what recipe you use the juice can actually taste good.  Well, the juice can taste tolerable.  Okay, the stuff tastes like crap, but it's good for you.  Only kidding about the crap part, it's actually not bad.

I began juicing a couple of weeks ago.  Most mornings I have a mixture of a bunch of kale, a head of romaine lettuce, 2 apples, a carrot, a cucumber, celery, and a partridge in a pear tree.  Or was that just a pear from the tree?  Whatever.  While I know it is very good for you I have a question for the Juicing Gurus of the World...Why does it have to be green?  As children we're taught that if there is a green liquid of some kind lurking around in the refrigerator to throw it out...green means it's gone bad.  Kind of like mold on white bread, which you shouldn't eat either - the mold or the white bread, but that's for a future blog.  Think of a very dark green liquid and picture yourself slugging it down first thing in the morning.  Of course you could opt for fruit juice, but where's the challenge in that?

I can't say that I feel much different now than I did a few weeks ago.  I have lost about 10 pounds though, partly because I substituted the drink for the bagel or muffin I normally would have. However, I'm thinking the weekend of diarrhea and not eating three weeks ago gave me a jump start.  By the way, when is the last time you saw the words "diarrhea" and "jump start" in the same sentence?  Only here, my friends.  But I digress.  I know what you're thinking and no, I wasn't sick from juicing, I caught a bug of some sort.  Apparently juicing is supposed to bolster your immune system to help fight off those bugs.  Which I think is ironic because don't bugs normally make their homes on fruits and vegetables?  So now you take those fruits and vegetables bugs lived on, throw them in a juicer, drink the resulting green sludge, and voila, you are immune to the bugs that lived on the stuff you're drinking!  What a country! 

I just made a fruit smoothie for the first time.  It consisted of a frozen banana (try finding THAT at a grocery store), a cup each of frozen peaches, frozen blueberries and a cup or two of almond milk.  Yes, there is such a thing as almond milk, but don't ask me how they make it - I'd rather not know.  You throw it all into a blender and it comes out looking a light purple/blue color, much more appealing to the eye than the green gunk.  It tastes good too...needs sugar though...organic sugar of course.  Not really, as that would defeat the purpose. (I did try adding the sugar, but don't tell my wife...)

I will keep you updated on my progress doing the juicing thing.  I'm just hoping that my skin doesn't turn a lovely shade of green and I begin to look like one of the creatures from the Star Wars bar scene.  It could happen - and if it does, you, my friends, will be the first to know.  Right after my dermatologist.