Day 7 - The Glory and Agony of the Paint Strainer Bag

Ok, so beet greens wilt really quickly.  I got up this morning and carefully opened the refrigerator because the furry demanders insisted on being fed right now!, and rather than being hit in the face with the beet greens, they just kind of dripped down the shelves of the fridge (a beet stalk is really long).  We bought a ton of stuff at the stores yesterday, and there is not enough room in the fridge for it all, so I decided the first thing to do was make juices for the day. 

I seriously would have to think about it if I was offered a job where I got paid in this juice instead of money.

First I juiced the cantaloupe.  I had no intention of keeping that juice separate but it was like drinking straight happiness.  Best. Juice. Ever.   This really weird thing happens with melons where they can be unripe and tart in their melon-stage, but once juiced, they’re refreshing and sweet, with no unpleasant taste.  I even skinned the cantaloupe just below the very outer skin so that I could also juice the rind, and I had expected that to affect the sweetness, but it didn’t.  Or at least it didn’t affect it adversely.

Beet greens and strawberries.  I love my half-gallon Ball jars.

Next came the beet greens.  I had a lot of them.  And they make more juice than I had expected, especially since they were wilted.  I added a small package of strawberries and a whole lemon.  I’ve decided to try to keep colors separate.  I made a juice the other day with greens and carrots and it came out looking like poo, which, despite my efforts to get ahold of my ridiculous self and be reasonable, affected how it tasted.  I even tried to convince myself it was a chocolate shake.  Didn’t help.  I did finish it, though, mainly because I’m cheap.

Mean Green pre-strainer-bag.

Lastly, I made Joe’s “Mean Green” juice which is:

6 leaves of kale

2 cups of spinach

.5 cucumber

4 stalks celery

2 apples

.5 lemon

1 thumb- sized piece of ginger

Looks so simple, right?

I love ginger, so I put an extra piece in it.  At the end of my juicing, a TON of pulp was getting into my juice.  I had picked up a set of paint strainer bags because they are recommended by other juice-enthusiasts as an effective and cheap way to remove pulp, so I strained the beet greens juice first.  It went very well.  I rinsed the bag, and then attempted to strain the Mean Green.  It had much more pulp than the beet greens juice, and after trying to get it to drain for a few minutes, I tied it to the handle of my upper cabinet and let it drip into a pitcher.

Gravity helping me out.

After 10 minutes, it had drained all it was going to without manual encouragement, so I took it down.  I spent at least another 10-15 minutes trying to get the juice out by squeezing the bag.  I would have quit sooner, but I was still getting plenty of juice.  I finally said, “This is so not worth it” and quit.  I have visions of using an old fashioned laundry wringer or a pasta maker to run the bag through so you could gradually squeeze out all the juice without all the pain and frustration of doing it by hand.

For those of you that think the paint strainer bag idea is a good one, make sure you’re not squeezing the bag around a seam.  What ended up happening is the pulp squeezed out into the serged seam where I can’t get to it and clean it no matter how many times I wash it.  It will mold there, so I have to throw that bag away.  This may be hard to describe, but what you’ll have to do is pour the juice into the bag, twist off the top, then pull the bottom of the bag up level with the top and try to squeeze the juice out the middle of the bag.  I’ll try to post pictures in a future post since this is probably difficult to visualize.  Good thing I have an extra bag.

End result of the epic struggle.