There are two categories of juice.

Chris made a chart to judge the tastes of the juices. There are two categories. The first category is "If you have to fight your survival instincts to get the mother fucker down" then it is not a good juice and we will not make it again. The second category is "everything else is okay."

Breakfast juice was in the okay category. We had "Carrot Apple Lemon Juice". He didn't really like it, but since his throat wasn't closing up trying to block the liquid, it went into the okay box. I thought it was a little dull tasting, but decent enough

Carrot Apple Lemon

4 carrots

2 apples

1 lemon 

Lunch was better. Kind of dull tasting too, but not too bad. We had the "Garden Variety Juice". I decided to see if Cha Cha wanted kale pulp. The answer is "no." She closed her eyes and turned her head away when I made the humble offering.

Garden Variety

2 apples ( I used 3 so that there was enough juice for both of us)

2 cucumbers (I used 1 1/2 because Chris said 1 was all he could handle. So I quietly added another half to see what he would say. He didn't notice.)

8 kale leaves

a handful of parsley

When I got home from work we were both starving. So I made "Watermelon Crush". This one went in the "fight your survival instincts" box. I think it was because we used the rind. Chris almost couldn't handle it. He said his brain was whispering to him "don't drink this, this is someone's barf." It made a lot of juice, so he had to get down about 12 oz! I didn't think it was as horrible, my throat didn't shut down to try and prevent me from drinking it, like Chris's did.

Watermelon Crush

1/2 watermelon

1 lime

a handful of basil leaves

Green Juice

Time for a dinner juice. I'm going to call it Green Juice. Chris's drank it in one go, set the cup down and said he never wanted this one again! Within seconds he changed his mind.."nope, nope..it's not bad." I on the other hand didn't like it. I think my celery threshold is 2.
Green Juice
1 cucumber (that's right Chris, you had 2 1/2 cucumbers today)
3 celery
2 pears
some kale
1 zucchini 

The only really good juice today was the "Carrot Cake Juice." It didn't taste like carrot cake, but it was still good. I was skeptical making it because I don't like sweet potatoes and this one has 1 1/2 of them in it.

Carrot Cake Juice

4-6 carrots

2 apples

1 1/2 sweet potatoes

cinnamon sprinkled on top

Yum. Tastes like Thanksgiving.

And then there were beets.

This morning's recipe was for the Sunrise.

4 carrots   1 beet (!)   2 oranges

But first I decided to look on the internet to see if Bearded Dragons can eat beets. It turns out that it is okay for them to have beets rarely. I decided to save some of the pulp before I added the oranges so that my lizard, Cha Cha, could have some. 

She doesn't usually like to eat red or orange stuff, but I thought I would try it out anyway. 

So I juiced the carrots and the beet (after I peeled it, to reduce bitterness) 

and brought her some pulp. 

She doesn't even try it. She just looks at it like it is disgusting. 

So, I decided to add some bugs on top.

Surely it must be appetizing now. 

I mean, it has some mealworms and dried crickets and grass hopper legs on it.  Nope! She just walked away looking at me as if I ruined the mealworms by tainting them with beet juice. 

I know how she feels though. I added the two oranges and poured the juice into a glass. 

The color is so pretty.

As I started to drink it, I was disappointed. It has a very earthy smell and aftertaste. Yak! I knew beets were terrible! Imagine how horrible it would have been if I hadn't peeled the beet first. I thought I could suffer through it though. I mean the glass is filled to the top, but it is a small glass. But, I couldn't handle it. So I squeezed half of a lemon into it. Ah! Now it is okay with only a slight horrible aftertaste.  

So we have decided to try juicing

We decided to try juicing. We are going to do a 3 day fast of just juice. But first we need to eat all the junk food in the house. We know that we will not be able to stick with it, if there is temptation in the house. For starters, we did a juice for lunch today. Just to introduce it a little at a time, in case our bodies (our stomachs) get angry with being flooded with so many vitamins and fiber after a lifetime of sweet sugary and fatty goodness.

I bought a Breville Juice Fountain from Bed Bath and Beyond. It was $199.00 but I had one of those 20% off one item coupons and used it, so my total was only about $160.00. Then I headed to the grocery store to get enough fruits and veggies to get me through one or two juices. I didn't have time to come up with an entire grocery list for the fast yet.

This is what we tried the first day. Sorry I don't have pictures. I didn't think of writing about our experience until today.

I tried "Rainbow Juice". I think I got the recipe from rebootwithjoe.com
5 stalks celery
1/2 cucumber
1 tomato
1 carrot
1 pear (you could use peaches, but they are not in season right now)
1 orange

The formula actually called for 1/2 a pear (peach) and 1/2 orange. I tried the juice and said "oh, hell no!" and I added the rest of the pear and orange. Otherwise it wouldn't have been drinkable. Way too much celery!!! This tasted so bad, it took me 2 hours to get half the glass down. It tasted like bad Bloody Mary mix with too much celery. I'm not sure I will try it again. If you try it, definitely cut down the celery to about 2 or 3 pieces. Yak!

I knew that my husband, Chris, hated celery and cucumber so the Rainbow Juice wouldn't be a good first start for him. I made him a "Carrot Apple Ginger Juice." I thought it tasted really good. He didn't like it so much.

3 carrots
2 apples
1 small cube of ginger

It is good! I swear.

Now to the next day. I went grocery shopping to get us enough produce for 3 days of just juice for meals. It cost $70 (at Publix)! ahh! that was a shocker. I'll worry about how to pay for more groceries in 3 days. Hopefully, the benefits of juicing will be so great, that I won't worry about the cost. Here is a picture of what I got.

I got all the stuff listed on the grocery list from http://www.rebootwithjoe.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/RBWJ_5-Dayplan-11-05.pdf  

This is the 3 day plan found on the Reboot with Joe Website. 

Our lunch today was the Green Lemonade Juice. 

6-8 leaves of Kale

3 handfuls of spinach

1 green apple

1 cucumber

2 celery

1 lemon

I just knew this was going to be terrible! I mean KALE! yuck. "Oh Lordy Jesus not Kale!". That's how I felt. And Chris was giving the stink eye to the cucumber. So, I decided to go ahead and make another juice as a "chaser". One I found on Pinterest (that also happens to be on Reboot with Joe) that got good reviews. 

Crazy for Cranberries Juice

1 cup cranberries

2 peeled oranges

5 carrots

I made both juices, and we started drinking the Green Lemonade Juice. Hey, not so bad. Not bad at all. Chris said that 1 cucumber was the threshold of what he could handle. He apparently could taste it and could barely deal with it. The juice smelled like Kale, so I thought it was going to be awful. But, it tasted like Lemonade! Whoo Hoo!  Here is a link from another website that lists the benefits of the Green Lemonade Juice.    http://juicerecipes.com/recipes/green-lemonade-41

We also had a glass of the Crazy for Cranberries Juice to down too. So, bottoms up! I liked it. It tasted like orange juice. Both of these recipes will stay on the "Let's do it again" list for sure. And the best thing is, is that neither one of us are hungry. I thought we might be, I mean, who's stomach is going to be satisfied with just juice?