Juice, Juice, Juice

When Joe and I first started dating, if you had told him within 6 months that he would be juicing beets, carrots, celery, watercress, ginger, apples, kale, parsley, cilantro & spinach (not all together) he would have looked at you like you had seven heads.  

Well, that's precisely what happened.  I didn't tell him: juice or else.  But, I casually made juices in the morning and he drank them and when I stopped, he started juicing himself.  Joe's juices tend to be sweeter than mine (he loves adding 1-2 apples) whereas mine are more spicy (watercress & ginger galore) but what we do agree on is the act of juicing. 

Today we went to the park, had an iced coffee and came home and Joe juiced (watercress, beet, apple and carrot).  I was interviewed by consumer reports recently about my favorite juicer considering user friendliness, ability to clean and ability to juice.  I recommend the Breville Dual Disc Juicer.  The pros are that it's incredibly easy to clean, it's great to juice berries and harder veggies with and it has a blade as well as puree function (similar to the Champion but more user friendly in my mind).  You can put whole veggies and fruits down the chute which makes juicing nice and quick.  

beets, carrot, apple & watercress

The cons are that because it's a centrifugal juicer it isn't as great when it comes to juicing leafy greens, herbs, lettuces and parsley - it's less efficient than a masticating juicer and sometimes the whole leaves shoot into the "pulp holder".  Also, the shelf life of centrifugal juicers juice tends to be shorter because of the high speed required to juice, the juice gets oxygen dissolved in the juice which causes the juice to spoil more quickly.  

 The masticating juicer extracts the juice first by crushing it and then the pulp is ejected and it's then squeezed during a 2nd pressing stage - this results in more juice (even with wheatgrass and leafy greens and drier pulp).  They are slower and generally harder to clean, but they do an excellent job juicing.  In the masticating juicer group, the Champion is definitely the way to go.