Fresh Orange Juice

Tonight Sarah and I squeezed, by hand, some fresh orange juice. Now, you might be thinking, by hand? Yes. Yes I tell you. My hand pushed the orange into our 10 year old juicer.

Making fresh juice is something we've wanted to start doing for a couple of months now. I had mentioned this at work one day a few weeks before Christmas and my supervisor gladly handed me her 10 year old juicer that she said had been collecting dust with a multitude of other kitchen appliances for the past 10 years. Thanks Kathy!

Now, we have, on one occasion used the juicer to make some vegetable juice, but we found it was rather expensive and wasteful of some very good veggies! So now we keep a look out for inexpensive produce that will make good juice.

Last week the local supermarket had 3lb bags of oranges and 3lb bags apples for sale: buy 1 bag, get 2 more free. Just a couple of days ago we also bought 3 3lb bags of carrots for $1 a bag. We now have a good supply of cheap produce to juice!

Tonight was the first opportunity the two of us had together to put the juicer through some work. Just so you know, juicing is definitely a two person job; Sarah does all the work, and I make sure she does it right! Hmmm...I suddenly feel a cold glare in my direction...

By the time I arrived from work Sarah had already started peeling and juicing some oranges. It took us about an hour to peel and juice all 9 lbs of oranges and it was completely worth it. For $3 - $4 and an hour of our time we ended up with over 2L of freshly squeezed Florida orange juice. As Sarah says, "mmmm Florida...." Not this year darling.