Too Dirty to Cleanse?

Pressed Juicery, an LA-based company with locations all around southern and northern California, just opened their newest counter, tucked away in the back of a strip mall on Coast Village Road in Montecito. The ingredients are local to southern California, but since their only kitchen is in LA, that’s where the juices are prepared each day before being driven up to the other locations.

Now, it’s no secret that I don’t buy into the idea of cleansing, unless it’s a peanut-butter-toast-and-cereal cleanse. That I feel confident I could pull off. But when I stopped by their newest location to check it out, I saw a chalk sandwich board out front announcing their Grand Opening Special: $39/day.

As much as I hate the idea of a cleanse, I love the idea of a bargain (let alone a bargain advertised on a chalk sandwich board), so I was in.

Holly and Jeremy, who were working the counter, were quite energetic, informative, and helpful. They offer three options for cleanses; I chose Option #1, for people who are new to cleansing, since it is apparently the easiest plan to stick to. Holly helped me plan my cleanse using an adorable little chart that laid out all my options.

They offer seven “green” juices, four “root” juices, four “citrus” juices, and three “almond” juices. I got my choice of six juices, which I was to drink in this order: green, root, green, citrus, root, almond. In addition, I got a bottle of Chloropyll H20 to drink throughout the day and a bottle of Aloe Vera H20 to drink before bed for digestion.

I won’t pretend I wasn’t a little pumped to get started on this cleanse. I like making plans, and the idea of having a neat little formula for my day’s consumption was appealing to my brain (if not my stomach). Plus, the juices were colorful and looked pretty all lined up:

Holly even wrote numbers on their caps so I would remember the order!

Yesterday morning, I woke up slightly apprehensive but ready to begin my cleanse.

8:30am: First Green: Kale, spinach, romaine, parsley, cucumber, celery, apple, and lemon.

I drank this for “breakfast” over the course of an hour as I went through my normal morning routine. David had a protein shake for breakfast so I didn’t feel left out, and neither of us had coffee. The “Green 2,” as it’s called, was pretty sweet and tasty. Pressed Juicery uses the same trick I always pull to make my green juice palatable: toss an apple in there and hope for the best.

10:30am: First Root: Kale, spinach, romaine, parsley, cucumber, celery, beet, and carrot.

I drank my “Root 1” juice as a mid-morning snack, beginning in the car on the way to campus and continuing to sip it throughout lecture. Without my usual grains for breakfast, my body was starting to feel a bit strange. I was doing a lot of those inner burp things, which I have onomatopoetically dubbed “zongs.”

12:30pm: Second Green: Spinach, romaine, fennel, orange, pineapple, cilantro.

I guess this was lunch. I drank it on the drive home from campus and didn’t feel guilty about my lifestyle/disregard for safety the way I would have if I were eating a solid meal in the car.

The pineapple and orange in the “Green 5” made it noticeably sweeter than the green juice I had had for breakfast. After finishing it off, I felt tempted to eat some real food. It wasn’t that I was hungry; I just craved texture. To avoid the temptation of the kitchen, I went outside on the patio to write and took my time sipping lunch.

3:00pm: I remembered that I was supposed to be drinking the chlorophyll water throughout the day.

Chlorophyll is an antioxidant and keeps you energized. The juice tasted really lame and nothing-y, but I drank the whole thing quickly because my stomach was starting to feel empty. (Chlorophyll? More like Bore-ophyll!)

3:45pm: Citrus: Pineapple, apple, lemon, mint.

I started in on the “Citrus 2” as a snack immediately after finishing the weird chlorophyll water because I was still hungry. Like the green juice I had had for lunch, the citrus juice was dominated by the flavor of the pineapple.

I was beginning to feel bored with this cleanse. It was getting chilly out on the patio so I had to move inside to write at my kitchen table, and all the food options surrounding me were driving me a bit mad.

4:30pm: I really wanted a bowl of cereal.

I decided to call my beautiful, sage friend Saloni to talk about life instead.

5:15pm: I still really wanted a bowl of cereal.

It was time to drink the second root juice, but it seemed really unappetizing to me. So I decided to walk to the gym and take a spinning class to kill a few hours and take my mind off not eating solid food.

Out of the way, Juice! I need to get to those beers in back.

7:15pm: Spin class ends.

I felt great! It surprised me that despite not having consumed anything besides fruit and vegetable juices throughout the day, I was able to have a satisfying workout. Plus, I chugged about a liter of water.

7:30pm: Walking home.

On the 30-minute walk home from the gym, I started to feel uncomfortable. My head was aching dully and I was slightly off-balance. I pulled out my phone and Googled “exercising on a juice cleanse.” Yup, this was research I should have done before letting Janesh, my petite-gay-hilarious-Indian spin instructor kick my butt (and calves and thighs).

I did some quick math (not in my head! I used the MyFitnessPal app) and realized that, given my speed walk to and from the gym and my 45-minute spin class, I had netted about 180 calories for the day.

Um.

7:45pm: I arrive home.

By the time I reached my apartment, I had decided to break the cleanse and just go for that bowl of cereal. I didn’t even want to look at the second root juice I was supposed to have had for dinner – the thought of more vegetable juice made me feel slightly nauseated. As I nommed on my Cheerios, I perused Pinterest on my phone.

7:50pm: No way! According to Pinterest, you can substitute peanut butter for regular butter to bake a slightly healthier loaf of banana chocolate chip bread.

On it.

 

9:00pm: The oven timer goes off.

The peanut butter banana chocolate chip bread was done! David and I each enjoyed a slice of it while watching Modern Family on Hulu. I realized that spin class had ended almost two hours before and I still hadn’t showered - thus, I came to the satisfyingly punny conclusion that I must just be too dirty to cleanse.

Okay, so that didn’t exactly go as planned. I ate a bowl of Cheerios and a slice of banana bread instead of drinking the last root juice, and I didn’t even get to the almond “juice” (almonds, dates, vanilla bean, filtered water, sea salt) or the Aloe Vera H20.

But I don’t count my cleanse experiment as a complete fail, because I learned some important things yesterday:

1. Pressed Juicery makes some effing delicious juices. Their combinations of vegetables and one or two fruits for flavor and sweetness were genius, and I’m definitely going to try to copy the recipe for “Green 2.” And I still have that second root juice and the almond “juice” to enjoy today! Maybe I’ll mix them with some hard alcohol to make a cocktail.
2. According to my belated research and my personal experience, if you’re not eating solid food, don’t do any hardcore exercise. Walking or yoga is probably fine, but avoid spin instructors named Janesh.
3. I didn’t actually get hungry subsisting on potent, raw juice for a day. Mostly I just craved the texture of food. I ended up feeling dizzy (probably from a combination of hunger and fatigue) but my stomach wasn’t rumbling during the day or anything.
4. You can substitute peanut butter for regular butter to bake a slightly healthier loaf of banana chocolate chip bread. Thanks, Pinterest!

Juices, Deliver Us! Ascending Health Juicery

At the Santa Barbara SOL (Sustainable, Organic, Local) Food Festival last fall, I tried a sample of some kind of green juice from the Ascending Health Juicery stand. It was so tasty that I made a note to myself to find out where it came from and how I could get more.

Then, of course, I promptly forgot about it until Juice Week! Thank goodness for Juice Week.

The thing that caught my eye about Ascending Health Juicery this time is that owners Alfred Pomerleau and Deb Monroe aim to be affordable: their organic, raw, locally sourced juices go for $5 for an 8-ounce jar; $9 for a 16-ounce jar; or $16 for a 32-ounce jar. One of the ways they keep costs down (and demonstrate their love for the environment) is to collect and reuse jars.

Photo: www.ascendinghealthjuicery.com

Ascending Health is a small-scale operation, which means their menu is slightly limited: they always have a choice of five different juices, whose specific ingredients change with the season. You have to email (ahjuice@verizon.net) or call (805-698-5443) before 6pm to order your juice, which is then pressed the following morning and delivered to your door between 8:00-8:30am.

When I called Deb to place my order, she warned me that they make their juice “differently,” with minimal fruit (for minimal sugar) and special herbs that are meant to add healthy kicks. She actually described some of their most potent juices as “intense - not light and foo-foo.” Who likes foo-foo juices, anyway? Not this kid.

I was intrigued. So I ordered a (free!) delivery of one 8-ounce Original Red and one 8-ounce Original Green. I rolled out of bed when I heard the doorbell waited expectantly by my door in the morning and was not disappointed: Deb herself delivered my jars of juice at 8am sharp. Before she left, she warned me again that they were stronger than I might expect:

The instructions said to drink the juice slowly, savor it, and “allow your saliva to begin the digestive process.” So for lunch, I slowly savored the Original Green, willing my saliva to start digesting it (though, honestly, I can’t speak for my saliva’s success in that regard).

After dinner, I tried the Original Red instead of nomming on a leftover chocolate Easter egg, a decision for which I deserve to be congratulated. Both containers were filled to the brim, to the point that some spilled out when I opened the lid. So much juice!

It was hard to tell exactly what I was tasting as I sipped these juices. The specific ingredients change daily and always include some combination of “twelve to fifteen individual vegetables, a base of leafy greens (chard, cilantro, collards, dandelion, lettuce, kale, parsley, and spinach), apple, carrot, celery, cucumber, fennel, ginger, and zucchini” and sometimes also “bok choy, broccoli, cabbage, daikon radish and its greens, endive, fenugreek, radish and tops, turnip and its greens, purslane, or watercress.”

I definitely understood what Deb was saying about the intensity of this stuff. It must be because of the fenugreek. (I don’t know what fenugreek is.)

The Original Green tasted okay, like getting attacked by a firing squad of vegetables, but they’re throwing water balloons at you and it’s a hot day. The Original Red was a little sweeter and even a tad spicy – again, I blame the fenugreek.

So they were intense, but not in an entirely untasty way. I’d argue that when it comes to juices, intensity = concentration; the flavor is a result of Deb and Alfred packing in as many vegetables as humanly possible. I can almost feel my health ascending!

And the Beet Goes In(to the Juicer): Beet-Carrot-Spinach Juice

When it comes to receiving Christmas gifts, I’m a little nontraditional. Diamonds might be a girl’s best friend, but who wants a best friend who’s prettier than you? Also, best friends can stab you in the back - and if they’re using a diamond, it’s going to hurt.

So David, who obviously knows me well, gifted me a juicer. It’s not just any juicer - it’s the Omega 8006 Nutrition Center Juicer. We named it Omar. Omar is easy to clean, which makes him far superior to the only other juicer any other juicer I’ve ever used.

Of course, I wanted to start “juicing” (that’s what the cool kids call it) immediately. I decided to switch our Plow to Porch delivery subscription to the “Juicing Box,” which includes more juicing-friendly produce and fewer random things like turnips and dragon fruit.

We received our delivery later that week, and it included an absurd amount of beets. I don’t have anything against beets, but I usually like to eat about one beet per sitting, maybe two if for some reason I have two beets on a plate in front of me. In this “Juicing Box,” we received three bunches of beets, with four beets to a bunch. Math is not my strong suit, but that is too many beets.

At this point, we had no choice but to start juicing every day, so none of the produce would go to waste. It became sort of a bonding ritual between me, David, and Omar. David would come home from the office to find me diligently scrapbooking writing my dissertation, and we would head to the kitchen to find Omar and make some juice. We came up with a bunch of different juice “recipes,” all of which included beets, of course.

I felt like Lil’ Wayne with all the beets I was dropping… into the juicer. One of my favorite recipes only involves three vegetables: carrots, beets (duh), and spinach. Here’s what I used:

6 carrots from Rancho Cortez in Santa Maria, CA (distance from me: 65 miles)
3 beets, including stalks (save the leafy greens for a later meal)
1 bunch spinach, also from Rancho Cortez

I started with the spinach, because Omar’s instruction booklet said he prefers it if you start with the softer objects (like spinach) and work up to the harder objects (like carrots). That seemed reasonable. But after most of the spinach had been juiced, here’s what I had:

A disappointing yield, I’m sure you’ll agree. But not to worry: greens always produce a paltry amount of juice, and that’s just as well, because spinach juice tastes all weird and bitter. That’s what the carrots and beets are for: to make you forget you’re consuming an entire bunch of spinach in two sips. After juicing all the carrots and beets as well, I had a container full of juice (on the right, closer to Omar) and a container of pulp (on the left):

It was enough to fill two mason jars: one for each of us. I was struck by how much the carrot-beet-spinach juice resembled blood, and I suspect David had the same thought, because his face looked a little funny as he raised his mason jar to clink with mine.

Vampire juice?

After taking a sip, David and I smiled at each other from across the kitchen table and immediately turned away in disgust: our teeth were coated with a sheen of the blood-red juice. A superstitious person might assume we were vampires who had, just this second, committed murder.

On the bright side, it tastes delicious. The bitter taste of the spinach is completely overwhelmed by the sweet beets and carrots (whose juice is as sweet as a fruit’s, surprisingly). The moral of the story is: drink this juice, but not before a hot date! Unless your date is into the whole vampire fad.

When Life Gives You Anything at All, Make Juice

Until recently, I thought the verb “to juice” only came up in conversations between body builders and professional athletes in reference to the steroids they don’t take.

But apparently, it also comes up in conversations between hippies and health nuts (and me). “Juicing” means stuffing whatever fruits and veggies you can get your hands on into a juicer and then drinking what comes out the other end.

My married friends Sloane and Jason juice like it’s their job (and they don’t work at Jamba Juice, so no, it’s not actually their job). They buy huge tubs of spinach at Costco and blend it with other vegetables and fruits, then walk around sipping from thermoses of green juice all day. They’re doing it to lose weight, and it’s working – they look good.

Some people go on juice cleanses, during which they drink only certain juices for a period of a few days, or a week, or even a month. I think a juice cleanse sounds about as appealing as a roundhouse kick to the face. And if you go around telling people, “I’m doing a juice cleanse,” you’ll probably get a roundhouse kick to the face anyway.

Sorry, but if I wanted to go on a liquid diet it would involve chardonnay, not liquefied chard.

I’m not about to stop eating solid foods, but my roommate has a juicer so I decided to try juicing the vegetables I had purchased at last week’s farmers market just to see what happened. Here’s what I used:

3 small cucumbers
3 small apples
4 cups spinach
3 cups kale

Spinach-kale-apple-cucumber juice

As I added the ingredients, I felt like a contestant on the groundbreaking early-90s Nickelodeon game show Family Double Dare. The contestants on that show were always doing absurd tasks like slingshotting water balloons at human targets to try to fill a container up to the line before the other secretly dysfunctional nauseatingly happy family could complete the same challenge.

Luckily, I wasn't competing against anyone else. And I wasn't using a slingshot to get the ingredients into the juicer. But my progress was quite slow-going:

Goodbye, 2 cups of kale. Hello, disappointing amount of juice.

 

After adding 4 cups of spinach. Really?!

Finally, after adding the apples and cucumbers (which, unsurprisingly, yielded a lot more juice than the leafy greens), I had filled a large mason jar. The juice tasted delicious. The cucumber and apple flavors dominated the bitterness of the kale, as I had hoped.

But I didn't know what to do with what was left of the ingredients - the parts that weren't turned into juice. They had collected in a big, gunky mess that smelled delightfully fresh but had the consistency of muck at the bottom of a lake:

I poked around online, but nobody had any enlightening ideas about what to do with this juicer "junk." Most people composted it or fed it to their rabbits. I decided to just eat it with a spoon.

Then came the dreaded task of cleaning the juicer. It came apart into like, eight pieces. Each of those pieces was coated in damp, shredded vegetables that needed to be disposed of before they started to stink.

The deconstruction and cleaning process is so complicated, there are instruction videos on youtube. I know because I consulted one of those videos after wrestling with the stubborn thing for about twenty minutes. I ended up winning - having just juiced, I had extra-human strength, obviously.