Freecycle has turned out to be a great place to get people’s cast-off kitchen appliances. I got our waffle iron from there (and we do make waffles frequently enough to justify it). I got Stacey’s rejected slow cooker (I haven’t yet decided if it’s worth keeping; I’ve used it twice). And now we are the proud owners of a juicer.
Now, a juicer does strike me as the epitome of ridiculous space-hogging appliances that only do one thing. But over the winter my friend Teresa juiced me this crazy fruit-and-veggie concoction that was so good and I felt like a million bucks for the whole day after drinking it. So when I saw someone offering a juicer, I snapped it right up.
The juicer I got is this ancient Champion that weighs roughly as much as an anvil, with another anvil on top. And takes up as much space. But! As soon as I juiced up apples, kale, carrots, ginger, and lemon (while feverishly looking around the kitchen thinking, “What else can I juice??”), I was hooked. Anyone with a brain about color mixing (green + orange = brown) will realize that this mixture looks like death but it is actually delicious and oddly invigorating. And with the amount of sleep I get, I can do with as much invigoration as possible.
Also fun is that you can have it macerate things, to essentially make baby food. Well, I guess that would be fun if Zuzu weren’t rejecting anything with a baby-food texture and only eating food that looks like the food everyone else is eating (she’s no fool). But the woman who gave me the juicer said her kids love frozen bananas put through the juicer this way to make “banana ice cream.” I made this for the kids, and it was really good, but they didn’t eat it because they’d had a bunch of waffles for lunch, thus making it a day all about free appliances.
I see your bananas there attached at the end. Susan told me if you detach them they last longer and I tried it and she is right! Just a little kitchen wisdom.
Well, alright then. I ran right into the kitchen and detached all my bananas.
And I’ll also say that I hope everyone knows to store their jars of natural peanut butter upside-down, and then you don’t have to stir in that top layer of oil. (We keep them upside-down in the pantry, and then rightside-up once we open them.)
I started refrigerating our peanut butter and works like a charm for separation issues (although I’m not so much for cold peanut butter – oh well). We recently got a juicer and it’s been great fun to experiment with all sorts of crazy mixtures. One of our favorites was carrot, spinach, apple and strawberry juice. The boys love watching the colored layers pouring into the pitcher while the juice is coming out.
I’m not sure I’d like cold peanut butter either.
I haven’t tried spinach juice yet but I’m sure I will since we always have spinach. I’m impressed you had strawberries for juice. They always last 2 minutes in our house before they’re all eaten and the kids are all juicy and pink themselves.
Well, that was mainly because I went to the store specifically to load up on fruits and vegetables for our new toy! Ian is a real fan of strawberries and will usually plow through half a pound in one sitting.
Back to those bananas…have you heard of “green bags”? I swear by them! You put fruit and vegetables in them and they last SO much longer…