CLEAN UP & STORAGE

“Blessed shall be thy basket and thy store.” Deuteronomy  28:5

CLEAN UP:

Ironically, I’m watching Snow White with my 2 ½ year old grandson.

Snow is trilling and warbling “Whistle while you work” in an annoying fashion. She, of course, has an army of rodents, hopping things, and flying things helping her clean the cottage. Raccoons are washing clothes on scrub boards as we speak. They’ve never shown up at MY house to help I can assure you.

Let’s face it, buying, washing, cutting up, and storing vegetables is a chore. However, last night my DIL spent about three hours making homemade pot pies and mini-dessert pies for her family –a labor intensive work of love. God bless her.  So, I guess chopping a few vegetables is nothing compared to that. But, as I do this daily task, I am learning there are better ways to do things. Good ol’ trial and error. The steel mesh basket that extracts the juice is tough to clean. Its fine pores hold the vegetable fibers.

• Steel wool pads work well to clean it, but they rust quickly and only last a day or so.
• A bottle brush, for baby bottles, works well to clean most parts of the juicer.
• One of the top juicer manufacturers ships a nylon bristle scrub brush with theirs. Sounds ideal, but we will discuss juicers later.
• A small 5” rubber spatula works best for scraping pulp out of the juicer. I’ve tried larger ones, but they don’t get in there as handily as the baby one. (I grew up calling these "child cheaters" because they robbed a child from licking the  frosting bowl.)

STORAGE: 

Let’s talk about storage. Behold, my plastic bags of vegetables and fruit (V&F) in the refrigerator. I thought this was clever storage.

 

I could grab 2-3 sacks and then I’d dig through the bags to find what I wanted to juice.

Then I spotted this picture on the web and thought Duh! How nice is that? So, my project today is to shop for and put my (V&F) in the refrigerator in a pretty and handy fashion. I'll let you know how that works out.

D-I-L had, yet, another good idea: she suggested plastic tubs for convenience and freshness. One can slide them in and out of the refrigerator for use.  

FLASH! I already have several plastic bins I'm not using. Life gets better and better.

JUICE HAPPENS

“See how the farmer waits for the land to yield its valuable crop …” James 5:7

Dang it! I did it again,

Last night I juiced two, huge Granny Smith apples –  you got it –  right onto my counter top. When will I learn to put a container under the spout?

This morning, when I assembled the juicer, I put the glass with it as part of the whole kit. No more wasted juice! I had to laugh, though, when I found another online juice head sipped hers off the counter with a straw. Remember, we are foregoing coffee, maybe for the first time in years. This expensive, hard earned, labor intensive juice is precious.

I've discovered a juice machine that has a built-in juice catcher, and even better, an external pulp catcher. We will discuss the finer aspects of juice machines on DAY SEVEN. Wait for it. . .

Here's an interesting link I found:

Naked Juice

WISDOM OF THE DAY: Have patience with yourself and the process.