My friend Valerie is traveling quite a bit this summer. I miss her already, but while she’s gone…she left a little piece of her behind for us to remember her by. 

Yep, she left us her juicer. Isn’t that exciting? (Well, it’s exciting for me. I’m weird though, remember?)

For the past couple of years, we’ve tossed around the idea of investing in a juicer. Would it help us get more fruits and vegetables in our diets? Would we use it enough to get our money’s worth out of it? Do we want to deal with one more appliance in our kitchen? Is it even good for us, since drinking just the juice of the fruit has the potential to make us overdo our intake of fruit sugar?

So, with Valerie’s juicer in our home for a few weeks, we’re playing around with different yummy combinations of juices. We’re using it to help us decide whether or not we may want a juicer of our own some day.

So far, I’m having a lot of fun with it. I ordered a big 40 pound box of oranges from Azure Standard. Plus, I ordered 25 pounds of juicing carrots. Um, that’s a lot of carrots.

Here I am, making orange-carrot juice. And yes, I am just about to overflow my glass. 
But check out my fascinating photography ability. 
See that drop of  juice just about to drip off of the spout?
It takes a lot of skill to get a shot like that. Simply amazing. 
(And very, very lucky since actually I am as good at photography as I am at soccer.)

The kids weren’t big on the orange/carrot juice combo. Matt and I liked it just fine though. And, I used the leftover pulp that the juicer caught to make an orange/carrot cake. The results on the cake were so-so. I think I should have run the pulp through my blender first to make it less chunky. It’s all about experimenting. Trial and error.

The juicer we’re using is a Jack LaLanne JLPJB Power Juicer Juicing Machine. It is very reasonably priced and seems to be very high quality. So far, I’m very impressed with how easy it is to use and how easy it is to clean up. All of the parts go right into the dishwasher! Well, except for the motor. That would be a bad idea.

So, for all of you juicing kind of people out there, I’d love to hear what you have to say about this. Do you like your juicer? Do you use it often? What do you make with it? What do you do with the leftover pulp? Do your kids like it? What kind of juicer do you have?