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April 22, 2013
by Sarah 1 Comment

Talking to my juice peeps :)

I’ve dedicated quite a few hours today to answering comments and emails from everyone which is something I love to do. I REALLY appreciate the opportunity to connect with other people and help if I can. However, if I missed anyone please accept my apologies. I can get a bit lost in my blog sometimes, especially when you guys post comments on old posts. My archives are getting deeper and deeper and as I am clicking through to the comment links I sometimes forget where I am. So, if I did miss anyone, please pop a comment under this post and I will endeavour to reply asap

Have you noticed a slight change to my blog?

What started out as Planet Sarah (a place for me to ramble about all sorts of ramblings, not necessarily juice related, and which I never expected anyone to read) has now evolved into an active blog with real subscribers who actually talk to me…thanks guys…you’re awesome

As my blog got bigger and more people subscribed and asked me similar questions I saw the need for a proper website. One that laid it all out for you, so that you didn’t have to delve into the depth of my blog archives and also get lost like me…..That’s when The Juice Planet was born….it’s still not quite finished, but I keep adding to it when I get time and it gets a fair amount of traffic these days, so I hope it is doing the trick. If you have any feedback or suggestions about it I’d love you to comment.

But that’s not all…. a while back people started asking me about a forum, mainly, I think, out of frustration that another forum we juicers use wasn’t functioning properly. Well, the forum is just around the corner. It’s been a real technical challenge getting that one set up, boy oh boy, if you wanna know just how technologically advanced you are, set up a forum, it’s given me brain damage lol. But, it is almost ready for launch and when it is I will announce it here.

By the way, I popped a survey up a while back to gauge how much support there would be for a forum if I put one up. A lot of you were interested, and 64% of you also said you’d be happy to pay $10 to join. That’s awesome guys, a big thank you there. I couldn’t do it without some sort of financial input.

So, now I am tying it all together and have renamed my blog The Juice Planet Blog. The web address has also changed to http://www.blog.thejuiceplanet.com. But don’t worry, it wont mess up any links as I have it all ‘redirected’…which means in short that all roads still lead to Rome.

Where to from here?

Well, in keeping with the planet theme – I have always lived on my own planet and highly recommend the practice to anyone reading – at some point down the track I will begin blogging not just about juicing, but also about clean and sustainable living. I’m moving back to my beloved Tasmania at the end of this year and really REALLY hope to get properly stuck into growing my own food to compliment my nutritarian juicing lifestyle.

So, that’s all. I really just wanted to thank you all for your support, your comments and question, and for just taking the time to read my stuff. It’s been almost a year now since I started this journey, wow, what a ride!

Muchos gracias

Sarah

March 29, 2013
by Sarah 6 Comments

How To Store Juice for the Best Results Over 12 – 48 Hours

There is a lot of debate online about drinking your juice immediately after making it, versus making it in batches and storing it in the fridge (or freezer if you absolutely must).

As soon as you cut open the cells in a plant they come into contact with air, and this causes a thing called oxidation….this is a good word for you juicers to pop in your word bank, but it’s not a complicated thing. Oxidisation (or oxidation – I’m never sure which variation of the word is correct) simply means the chemical reaction when molecules come into contact with oxygen. In the case of plants, we are talking about nutrients. When the nutrients come into contact with air they start to break down.

In other words, the older your juice the less nutritional value it has.

Okay, so now that we have established fresh is best, let’s weigh up the practicalities of lugging a juice machine and a ton of plants around with you all day….need I say more? For most of us it just ain’t gonna happen. Sadly, many people give up on a fast because they think if they can’t drink juices within 2.4 seconds of making them, then there is no point in doing a fast at all. But people, there is a point; the point being that juicing is good for you, and as long as you store your juices properly, you can seriously slow down the oxidation process and still get all the benefits of a nutrient rich cleansing juice.

Here is how I do it:

Step 1. Pour your juice into a glass jar, filling it right to the top. I make my green juices in batches of 3. So the first jug load fills the jars half way. Notice the bubbles and little bit of pulp at the top.

By the time I fill them to the top there is quite a bit of foam, even though my jug has a foam catcher.

Should you drink the foam? Sure, if you want to. It’s not as nutritional as the juice, but it does have some nutrition. Some people like it. You can stir it into the juice and drink it right away. In fact, I used to use the foam and pulpy bits to fill the jar, but I don’t do that any more. Why? You’ll see in a moment. Keep reading.

Step 2. Start scooping out the foam with a spoon. If you don’t like much pulp, then scoop that out too. Pulp has its benefits, and there is nothing wrong with keeping the pulp that manages to escape from the juicer into you juice, but as for me, I like my juice as texturally smooth as possible.

By now you might be getting a clue as to why I scoop out the foam…see the jar on the right? The bubbles are starting to pop….

Notice how the foam is full of air bubbles…and what don’t we want in our storage jars?….thats right, we don’t want air. Keep scooping until you have removed all the foam and pulp.

Problem now though is that the bottle is no longer full, and for oxidation to slow down the bottle has to be full, so that no air is trapped between the juice and the lid.

Step 3. Top the juice up with water, preferably filtered. Fill it all the way to the very top.

It should look something like the juice on the left.

Step 4. Screw the lid on tight and pop it in the fridge.

Now, for the sake of demonstration I put both of these juices in the fridge, one scooped, one unscooped. I made these juices in the evening with the intent of having them the following day. However, again, for the benefit of demonstration, the next day I decided to leave them them a bit longer still.

I eventually opened the juices 36 hours after making them. Here is the one that I scooped:

Here is the one that I didn’t scoop:

Now it might not be that easy to tell in the photo’s, but hopefully you can see that not only did the foam bubbles all eventually pop causing the juice to shrink back and leave an air pocket, but, the juice has also discoloured a little…which is because of that air pocket. You can see it’s become more of a dirty green shade. Changes in colour are a good way to tell if your juice has significantly oxidised…..I really didn’t like the look of this one and threw it away. But the first one I opened looked fine and I thoroughly enjoyed it…you know, in that way you enjoy green juices because you know they are good for you even if they don’t always taste as good as we juicers make them out to taste

Happy juicing

March 22, 2013
by Sarah 3 Comments

Angry Eating

Some people eat when they’re happy, some people eat when they’re sad.

Me, I eat when I’m ANGRY!!!!!!

Okay, I eat when I’m happy and sad too, I think most of us, particularly women, are guilty of emotional eating. In fact, recently on Dr Oz he illustrated with animation how emotions affect the female and male brains differently, so gals, emotions triggering cravings is VERY normal and very REAL. But anyway, I digress….

Today I was angry.

I’ve been a pretty good girl of late, dietarily speaking. In fact I would say I started and have continued the year quite well.

Whilst my 30 day fast at the start of the year kinda fizzled out half way (again)….I am happy with my increasing shift towards nutritarianism and 174 degree lean to veganism.

My weight is moving in a general downward motion, at least it feels like it is, and aside from the ‘stage 0′ cancer thing, I’d say my health is pretty much on the up….oh yeah, I have stage 0 cancer by the way. Those who have been following this blog from day 1 know about ‘the annoying thing on my cervix’…I’m sorry to say it’s still there…but there I go digressing again.

Today, I was angry.

Initially I was irritated, then somewhat frustrated.

After an hour of sitting in a government building waiting to resolve an ongoing problem with my daughters student payments, I was, shall we say, a tad annoyed?

At the 2 hour mark I was properly pissed off.

Now, as much as I’d love to have a blog where I can passionately spout my opinions on social and political issues, this isn’t that kind of blog. So, I wont bore you with the details, I’ll just quote my sister:

“Seriously Dude, it’s just one thing after another. My life is either shit on toast, or a shit sandwich”

After a little over 3 hours I left the government service building with a massive sense of powerlessness, underpinned by an even bigger sense of FFS!

I was angry, and as you know, when I’m angry, I eat.

So do you wanna know what I ate? Do you? Do you really wanna know?

A freaking BIG MAC!

Now here’s the thing. I DON’T EVEN LIKE BIG MACS….. I’ve never ever liked Big Macs. Someone should call them Big Craps.

But aside from this, here I am, juicer extraordinaire. The lady who is always talking about ‘clean’ food. The person who goes to great lengths to source that clean food, and then who from time to time goes absolutely stupid and plows head first into a bag of M&M’s or in this case…. two dead cow patties, poisoned sauce, lettuce, pus, pickles, onions, on a sodium benzoate bun!…okay, the sodium benzoate was actually in the diet coke. YES I had one of those too, though it is of some consolation to say that I was unable to drink it. Yuk.

Well, there is no doubt at some point today I am going to pay for my indiscretion from one end or the other, not sure which yet. But my main concern is that I will never break away 100% from these instant emotionally gratifying foods.

Why can’t I be like Fully Raw Kristina? She’s awesome, check her out on youtube. Oh how I wish I had the resolve of my buddy Kitten (The Juice Pirate) who inspires me daily with her transformation from someone almost immobilised by the 400lbs+ she used to carry before she became one of the healthiest and most attractive people I know. I continually aspire to be like the awesome Kris Carr, who found out she had cancer and changed her eating lifestyle literally overnight, never looking back…..Or my sister, who when faced with shit on toast jumps on the treadmill and does some angry exercise. But not me, I eat.

I guess if anything, maybe me sharing this will help others realise that they are not alone in their own battle with emotional eating. Who knows, maybe when Kristina is beside herself, maybe she eats something really bad, like….tuna? And maybe, just maybe Kris Carr does look back and have maybe a snickers or something from time to time. None of us are perfect, I hope.

So now the question is, do I regret eating that burger? Hell yes! Did I at least enjoy it at the time? Not really. Could I have made a healthier unhealthy choice? Sure. But I was angry, really angry. Sushi wasn’t going to cut it. And besides, Macca’s was looming right there in front of me, as it tends to do. And I was angry…did I mention that already?

People tell me that this eating evolution, or revolution if you like, is a process, and that is exactly what it is. Yes, I do write a lot about the benefits of juicing, about healing through nutrition, about living clean, but I’m not 100% there yet.

I know a lot of stuff. I read, I learn, I even plan on taking a certificate in Nutrition soon, but like everyone else, there are moments when it all just goes flying out the window…..but it passes. Much like recovering from the grief that inspired this journey. There are still times when I fall to my knees, but the time between each fall gets longer and longer…the time spent on the floor shorter and shorter.

I’m heading in the right direction. That I know.

March 16, 2013
by Sarah 7 Comments

Health and Beauty…are they mutually exclusive?

I’ve been on a diet for about 25 years. It started around 1983…hang on, that’s 30 years, wow! I think it sort of coincided with puberty when I blossomed almost overnight into the voluptuous wench I am today. I’ve been watching my weight ever since. Come to think of it, I don’t think I was watching it at all, but other people certainly were.

“Oh Sarah, you’re such a beautiful girl, if you would only lose a bit of weight”

“You’ll be so beautiful when you grow up a bit and lose all your puppy fat”

“Your husband is so fit, don’t you ever worry about loosing him to a slimmer girl?”

Here’s one of my favourites;

“I don’t understand how you can be overweight when you are always struggling financially, how can you afford to eat?”

These are all real quotes, repeated to me often throughout my life; by my grandmother who I love and adore, but who undeniably affected my body image to the point that when I travel home for a visit I don’t take my daughter with me. I always have an excuse, and they are always mostly true, such as “I can’t afford the airfare” or “our study breaks are out of sync” but the absolute truth is that I do not want the same comments directed at her. My own daughter transformed into a voluptuous curvy girl at puberty too, but the truth is, she is also a child of the computerised generation. Her passion is animation, she sits in front of a computer almost all day. She has no interest in sport, she is surgically attached to her sketch pad, and when not drawing, she is writing stories for future animation projects…and her favourite foods? Well, she’s 17. Carbs of course.

Her Dad would like her to be a gym junkie, one of those teens who is obsessed with her appearance, who always looks fabulous, and who is inspired to do so in order to stay up to date with current fashions…but she would much prefer that no-one look at her, especially boys, they make her nervous.

But going back to me…

I have been on a diet since 1983. I am lucky in that I have always really enjoyed healthy food. Fresh vegetables, fruits, brown bread, brown rice, fish, all the good stuff. But, problem is that I am also very adventurous, and so I love all foods, except Black Pudding, seriously, who likes that stuff? As a result I have felt like I have spent my entire post pubescent life being denied things. “Oh I shouldn’t eat that” “oh I better not, I’m trying to lose weight” but of course every time I had some sort of emotional crisis in my life (about every 6 weeks consistently for the last 30 years) my love of healthy stuff went out the window, replaced by huge portions of pasta with creamy sauces, doughnuts and of course chocolate…..this, for those of you who are not familiar with this destructive pattern is called “Yo-Yo Dieting.”

Thing is, despite the odd health issues, like PCOS and chronic depression, I have always considered myself pretty healthy. I could walk up a hill at twice the pace of my skinny friends. I’ve always had good skin. My immune system must be pretty good as I rarely catch colds…but I have always been “the fat one.”

So my question is, health and beauty? Are they mutually exclusive? As in can you have one without the other?

Here’s a picture of beauty…

Tara Lynn

Is it also a picture of health?

Now I know that excess weight is synonymous with poor health at some stage, but where is the line? How slim does one have to be to also be healthy? Or, conversely, how healthy does one have to be to be slim?

I have friends whose weight would indicate that they are far healthier than I, who are at a much lower, if in fact no risk at all, of developing diabetes. And while cuddly me – who right now has perfect blood sugars, perfect cholesterol and almost perfect blood pressure – consumes a farmers market worth of plants each week, they go around eating potato salad, drinking loads of wine, and perhaps the most adventurous vegetable they have ever consumed is a carrot!

The motivation behind this post is of course my daughter. I know my daughter is heading towards some serious health problems, so I am not brushing it under the carpet by saying “Oh darling, it’s okay, you are so beautiful no matter what your size”, I’m just trying to find that balance. To focus on feeling rather than weighing. And more importantly to lead by example.

As a juicer, which is what I call myself – a juicer and nutritarian who is still cuddly – I no longer worry about my weight. I no longer diet. I don’t care about calories, or what the scales say. I know that I am healthy. Sure, I still have PCOS, I still have that pesky little growth hanging around on my cervix, I still struggle with depression, and I will probably always be cuddly. But being healthy today does not feel like the deprivation and punishment it used to feel like when I was ‘dieting’. I have finally found a sustainable eating lifestyle, and I feel great, seriously, I do. I FEEL well. I FEEL alive. I FEEL my body functioning right. I don’t feel like I need to be slim to prove it any more.

And, my daughter is benefiting from this change in me. She hasn’t really embraced juicing yet, but she is working on it. I notice her choosing not to eat as much meat as she used to. I see her mind turning now when she talks about food to her friends…..okay, maybe I’ve scared the crap out of her by talking about castoreum (red food colouring obtained from beaver anal glands), pink slime (left over animal bits snuck into meat products) and aspartame (fake sweetener that can trigger brain tumours among a zillion other chronic diseases). Sometimes I am freaking her out for fun…come on, admit it, you like freaking your kids out too…but most times we’re just talking about new things I have learned. And she is listening. She isn’t listening to me compare her to other girls, she doesn’t hear me tell her she would be beautiful only if she was slim, but she hears me when I say beauty does indeed come from the inside…or as Kris Carr would say, “What you eat, drink and THINK”….in other words, it is something reflected by our state of mind and how we show our body we love it.

Conclusion…I think as parents, particularly mothers of daughters, we need to really think about what we are teaching our daughters about diet. It has become really important to me as a mum to make sure I do not teach my daughter to juice fast for weight loss. Juicing is not a weight loss diet, it is a lifestyle, a clean living lifestyle. So I teach her about juicing for health, about using it as a way to prepare her body for weight loss.

As mums I think we also need to toss out those scales, and learn to rely on our own bodies to tell us that we need to treat ourselves with more love. Does that sound preachy? I hope not. My ex husband often implies I have failed in some way by not making our baby girl more self image conscious but me, I’m thankful for it. Our baby girl has the most amazing sense of social justice, is a deep thinker, a lover of all underdogs, and an absolutely amazing creative artist. Yes, she needs to lose weight. She needs to love herself as much as she loves others, but I know she will get there, because I am finally leading by example.

But what about my initial question, is health and beauty mutually exclusive? Can you be overweight and still healthy? Can you be overweight and beautiful? Can you be overweight and beautiful if you’re NOT healthy…I guess it depends on your idea of beauty. What do you think?

March 7, 2013
by Sarah 3 Comments

Juicing is often an experimental process…frangipani anyone?

Recently I found myself lounging in my new garden chair, smelling the roses, communing with nature and contemplating my navel (as you do) and I got to thinking how I could incorporate edible flowers into my treat juices…coz lets face it, they’d be lost, if not completely wasted, in the “must-have-daily-green.”

I already use jasmine and rose in my tea’s and have started playing with them in juice, but what about frangipani?

A locally grown dragon fruit.

Well, yesterday I had the joy of finding a locally grown dragon fruit. Remember me raving on about the amazing heavy metal detox abilities of the dragon fruit recently? Well, they are rather expensive for such a somewhat plain tasting fruit, but oh my gosh are they just divine to look at, and seeing as I know how good they are for detoxing and bearing in mind that we should all support our local growers whenever the opportunity arises, I bought this baby here and set about experimenting with a new juice.

If you remember my last experiment with a dragon fruit produced my Imperial Dragon; a divinely exotic fruit smoothie slash juice made with dragon fruit, mango, lychee, rambutan and lime. It was absolutely delicious, but very very high in sugar. So this time I decided to go for something a little less opulent.

Here is what I tried:

I popped the whole dragon fruit including the skin, in my blender along with both cheeks, also including skin, of 1 mango, 10 frangipani flowers, – yes, the flower, it is edible and it is delicious and tastes just like it smells, sweet and exotic. I then tipped in the water from 1 young drinking coconut.

By the way, I considered using the flesh of the coconut. Young coconut should have a very thin soft layer of flesh, however when I cracked this one open it was very thick, as you can see from the picture, and not much softer than a mature coconut, so I left it as it would have been just too much coconut fibre, taste and fat (for me personally).

Now to the frangipani’s. Despite recent navel ponderings about using them in a juice, the idea came as an afterthought, so I popped out to the garden and grabbed a handful off the tree, washed them to make sure there was none of the milk on them, I have a feeling that would be bad, and threw them all into the blender too.

Last but not least, I added a large handful of ice.

Blend blend blend blend…la la la…dum de dum and voila, a new smoothie is created.

Okay, but was it fabulous like my last dragon fruit experiment? No, not really. It wasn’t horrible, in fact it was quite lovely and refreshing, but I will do it differently next time simply because it wasn’t fabulous, and as lovely as lovely is, it isn’t quite the same as fabulous is it?

Here is what I would do differently.

I would use my stick blender to blend the mango with skin, and the dragon fruit flesh in the jug of my juicer. Then I would run the dragon fruit skin and the frangipani through the juicer into the jug. I wouldn’t use the coconut water, I found the coconut overpowered the flavour of the frangipani. This might not be the case if I had used packaged coconut water which never seems to taste quite like a fresh one. If it needed watering down I would use just water…(maybe almond milk, hmmm, there’s a thought). I might also use 2 handfuls of frangipani rather than 1 so that the frangipani flavour and fragrance was more pronounced. I would then squeeze the juice of half a lime in, yes, squeeze, not juice, as just a hint of lime is all it would need.

Now I realise not everyone has a frangipani growing in their garden, but the point is, flowers really can add a lovely exotic touch to your juice. If you don’t have flowers in your garden, why not try rose water or orange blossom water? You can pick up a bottle of these waters in an eastern store if your local supermarket doesn’t have them. Remember my Orange Blossom Fruit Salad Juice? Oh that was divine indulgence for sure.

Okay, enough about indulgence. Before i go perhaps i should remind you that these sweet fruity juices and smoothies really are a treat and not the sort of thing you’d be indulging in all the time, not just because of the sugar hit, but also the cost, ouch! But every now and then, when something fancy is in season, don’t be afraid to spoil yourself and experiment with your own exotic blends.

Happy Juicing everyone

February 20, 2013
by Sarah 3 Comments

Baby Berry Beet

Following on from my previous post here is one of my new ‘Baby Juice’ recipes.

Can you imagine getting your little one, or big hairy one, to eat beets? To delight in that sweet earthy flavour that I personally know and love so well? No? Me neither lol. My daughter absolutely loathes them. Won’t go near them with a 10 foot barge pole. Absolutely hates the smell they make when I cook them, and always has a laugh at what they do to my, umm, how can I say it?….oh what the hell, I’ve talked about my bathroom habits often enough on here as it is, so why stop now….yes, she laughs at how I eat them, knowing they go right through me, and then how soon after, very soon, I produce the most impressive coloured poop! Yep, there you go, I just said poop on my blog!

So, she hates them, but, I just know how great they can taste in a juice. So when I was at the store the other day and saw this absolutely gorgeous bunch of super fresh baby beets I was determined to sneak one into her juice somehow.
Well, when I handed it to her she asked what was in it. “Mostly strawberries” I said. She sniffed it gingerly. “Mum, is there beetroot in there? It smells a bit weird and its really dark for strawberry”…darn these intelligent children…”Well, yes, there is a tiny teensy tiny little beetroot in there” I said, showing her with my fingers just how tiny it was, and really, it was pretty tiny, not even as big as a golf ball.

I took her hand and pointed her to Kitten The Juice Pirate’s picture which has inspired her so much. “Come on” I said, “just try it, you might like it”. And guess what. She did! Not only did she like it, she loved it. She actually asked me to make her another one tomorrow.

When she finished it she told me she thought the beet leaves made it look really cool, but she was glad I didn’t put them in the juice……cue evil laugh, mwah ha ha ha. I even put the carrot leaves in….more evil laughing mwah ha ha ha.

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