NOW what am I supposed to do?

  

Is this the holiday weekend? Or is that next week? I haven't heard of any community fireworks being planned. That seems wise. 

I'm thinking about food:

 Does it seem suspicious that Annie chose the sushi to match her outfit?

We're still juicing, but not exclusively (see photos above). We returned our loaner juicer - thanks, Lori! - and bought this one, the Jack LeLanne model.

We've only had it a few days, so no vouching for its longevity yet. However, it's a quiet-running, very efficient machine. We're even getting more juice than before. The cram-it-in chute is big, so not a lot of chopping. So far, so good.

We first bought another brand, but it was pulling a lot more than its nominal draw, and kept tripping our inverter. Thank goodness Amazon has an easy return policy.

Amherst Lake

I've been wanting to say something about Flagstaff and RV-friendliness, but I just don't have hard, cold data. The Walmart in the south of town, off Beulah Ave., has RVs parked in it all day. LOTS of RVs. All kinds of RVs, and lots of vehicles who are obviously (to the trained eye) stealthing. The signs posted say '24 hour parking only.' I don't know if it's a 24-hour Walmart, but the signs pretty much give a wink and a nudge to overnight parking, at least.

We also see RVs parked in the evening at the Walmart off 40, as well as the next-door Cracker Barrel. *mmmm... Cracker Barrel ... * Haven't been in there to parse their signage. 

If this is the holiday weekend, hope you're all having a bang-up, yet safe, time. If it's not the holiday weekend, keep calm and carry on.

Edited 2/20/2014: The Walmart signs that used to say "24 hour parking only" are gone, replaced by signs that say "NO overnight parking." Alas. 

Pack them full of space food sticks.

The winner of the Space Bag to Go giveaway is Sherry! Sherry, at your convenience, give me an address and I'll commission the Space Bag people to ship them out. Space Bags - the Luggage of Astronauts.

We wrapped up our juice reboot last night. We thought non-veggie foods would be ambrosia to our lips. Nectar of the gods. We were disappointed all around. My impression of "regular" food is that I feel worse after eating than I did during the juicing. Each meal sets me back a little. The challenge is to sort out what's ungreat about what I'm chewing. I'm annoyed to have my food fighting back - I want my juice!


Annie noted sweetly that I seemed cranky today. About what? Food. The good news is that we bought our own little juicer and returned Lori's, so now everyone can juice. I like to juice it juice it! I like to juice it juice it! I like to juice it juice it! We like to -- juice it!






Overview: We each lost a few pounds. We lost our morning headaches. I was not stiff and achy in the morning. We were less congested. I felt unimpaired by what I was eating, for a change.

The two of us spent $18/day on produce, a mix of conventional and organic. We sprang for organic for leafy things and soft-skinned fruits, and went organic as much as available otherwise.

I don't want to rush right back to coffee. I like being ready to go with or without a cuppa, or without having to flail helplessly until caffeine has kicked in. Your mileage may vary.


Last weekend we couldn't see the forest for the RVs. One huge group with several RVs and just as many tents showed up and made themselves right at home, laughing into the night and whooping randomly. We thought how happy they must be to have a long weekend to party with friends and forget the crap pile they call "work." Whoop! Ha! Ha! Ha! Yeah! Then another group crammed in close with their three rigs, and immediately began being happy for their own long weekend. Oh! Hoho! Aha! Ha! Ha! Phweeeeeeeeeee! [whistle] Somehow they completely quieted the first jubilant group.

It's interesting that some weekend RVers think because they're in the forest, there's no semblance of "quiet time." YAY! NO RULES IN THE FOREST! PHWEEEEEEEE!" [seriously, whistles. The heck, people.] We didn't get riled. It's all compassion, all the time around here. Don't ask for whom Sunday afternoon rolls. It rolls for thee.

Thanks for tolerating the food talk, you people who hate food talk. Thanks for feedback and reading references, you people who don't.

Bait and switch

Poop from elk and poop from cows 
Live together in peace - I don't know hows! 
Side-by-side underneath the pine trees, oh geez! Why can't we?
[Ebony and Ivory]

I started with poop, McCartney and Jackson, because if I told you I was going to talk about our green juice fast...well, how fast can a surfer click? Move your cursor away from the hyperlink. It's going to be fun. You'll love it. It might even get back to poop, who knows?

I blame Tessa, Evelyn, and Lynne. The gurus of good eating. The trio of try it! you'll like it! The Vegan Vagabonds. They linked to Fat, Sick, and Nearly Dead, and who can resist a good love story? By the way, that link takes you to Hulu where you can watch for free.

We're easily the most suggestible people living in a pine forest, so we made a plan to do it. Here we are, doing it. A vegetable/fruit juice "reboot."

   

We've been at it about 24 hours now, so here's our accumulated wisdom. Think of it as Alexandria before the fire:

1. a little beet goes a long way
2. cherry tomatoes are the garden's Houdini
3. broccoli is more easy-going than you'd expect

The movie predicted that a conventional juice diet (that is, made from conventionally-grown produce) would cost ~$14/person/day, and organically-grown, double that. That seems high, but reboots don't come cheap.

Our first batch of produce = $53, a mixture of organic and conventional. It looks like we'll come in way under the projected cost for this purchase, since we'll still be working on this produce tomorrow, but it also turns out we can't drink as much juice as those guys did, either. 

Half the smoothie

     

The other half

The juicy experts suggest we put the caffeine away, which explains today's 2.5 hour nap. Look how much cats sleep! It's because they don't drink coffee.

I'm not doing a daily progress report, because that implies I will talk about juice every day for ten days. It can't happen. There won't be enough waking hours to blog.

We were talking about this project with my cousin, Lori, and I reminisced about how we did juice fasts when I lived with her.  

... you lived with us??

Yeah! For three months! You don't remember?

... you lived with us??

Right! It was 1979. You were vegetarian then.

... you lived with us??

Definitely! Jen was three, and Jon was a baby.

I remember I cleaned the whole apartment, and then a roach strolled out of the closet.

No, that was me.

And then she lent us her juicer.

This is all mostly an experiment, with the guidelines being 80% vegetables (mostly leafy)/20% fruits. After the initial juice batch (we call it the "beet batch"), we got comments:

• "not horrible!"
• "I don't want to vomit!"

What we've read indicates it gets even better than that, and so it did.