Juicin' Juice: Day 5 of 10

This morning the wife made a fruity juice for breakfast, then took extra caution to try and make a better-tasting savory juice for her lunch and dinner gulps at work. As she ground each ingredient, she stuck a spoon under the flow to test each item to see which one might have infected her batch yesterday. It wasn't even a matter of testing for the initial taste of the juice, but instead the aftertaste. She still wasn't sure which one it was, but decided that the half runner beans I'd bought didn't taste good at all in juice form. I had a spoon of that, too, but it just tasted inoffensively like snow peas to me.

My own breakfast juice was different and tangy, for today I incorporated that old breakfast staple of grapefruit, along with pear, apple, mango, grapes and strawberries. The end result tasted like one ingredient too many (probably the mango), but was still good.

I went out to buy some celery in the day, which didn't make it into my cart on yesterday's grocery excursion. Celery contains an impressive amount of juice. I guess this makes up for the veggies we try that barely have any. It's so disappointing to feed two cups of spinach or some broccoli into the hopper only to have two drops of juice come out. We have acquired more skill at running the machine, learning to juice each item as slowly as we can to extract the most from it. However, some fruits are just over ripe to begin with and just explode when they hit the whirling blade disc, and their wet pulp just flies past the mesh screen and into the pulp container. Had some sprite melons do that this morning. Celery, though, juices like a charm.

While I was out, I happened to drive past several fast food places without incident, but when I hit the stretch nearing McDonalds my brain kicked in and I imagined how amazing it would be to order two Quarter Pounders and a truly large order of fries, no doubt forced from the fry cook's hands at gunpoint, cause that's about the only way McDonalds will treat you fairly on the fries here. (And speaking of McDonald's passing the cheap on to the customers, I don't normally eat two Quarter Pounders, but I've noticed recently that McDonald's Quarter Pounders have gotten quite a bit smaller than they used to be. They used to be a substantial sandwich, but now they're barely more than one of their standard cheeseburgers in size. Did the price shrink as well? I doubt it. Don't think this sort of food embezzlement is going unnoticed, Ron!) As soon as I had this lovely vision, my mouth began to water. And it was in that moment that I realized that I had the power to make that vision a reality if I wanted. I could eat four Quarter Pounders, if I so chose and would enjoy every bite. But at the same time, I wasn't so hungry or impulse driven that I would break my juice fast barely five days into it. I assure you, after my fast is over, those burgers and fries will be mine as a reward, but I'm still doing pretty good.

I did notice as I was nearing home, that I was feeling a bit mentally hazy. I've been expecting my brain, free from the ravages of caffeine, to snap into some sort of clarity, but at that moment I wasn't feeling it. I felt like having a nap, in fact. I didn't, but I felt like it.

Turns out I wasn't the only one feeling mentally down. Late in the afternoon, I texted the wife about something and her response was "Yeep…this juice is awedful….I am dying. Weak, can’t think… headache… can’t drin k it." I started to write her back to see if I needed to mix something else up to bring to her, but the phone rang first. She said she felt awful and her brain wasn't functioning right. She was forgetting to write prescriptions and couldn't remember which patient was in which room and generally screwing up her job.

"What do you want me to do?" I asked.

"Would you please bring me some stir-fried vegetables and some salmon?"

"Uh... really?"

"Yes. Really," she said. "I can go back on juice tomorrow, but I need food right now. I can't work like this."

"All right, then," I said. "See you when it's done."

So I went to the freezer and retrieved one of our precious frozen salmon filets, all Alaskany and everything, and fried that sucker up along with some zucchini, red peppers, broccoli and squash. And not tasting any of it, dammit. It was incredibly hard, because my favorite bits are the little bits of salmon that flake off and get all crispy in the bottom of the pan, and there was a really good looking one in there, too. I even started to pop it in my mouth, then forced my hand down. I completely understood and agreed with the wife's reasons for going off the diet, but as much as I wanted to, as much as I wanted to drop off her fish and head directly for my Quarter Pounders, I just didn't want break the fast. If you'd asked me on day one if I truly thought I'd make it through all 10, I would have told you that I wouldn't be at all surprised to only make it 5. Five seemed like a good and doable number. Now, on day 5, half way to the end point, I knew how much better I would feel if I didn't.

I put half the salmon and all of the veg in some Tupperware and ran it up to the wife and hung around while she ate some of it. She was afraid to eat too much, especially as rich as salmon is, for fear of hurling, but she said it was very good and kept offering me bites. I declined. Instead, I drank the rest of the juice that she couldn't stand. It didn't seem too bad to me. Not my favorite, but not the worst I've tasted, or even made myself. I took the remaining bottle of it home, intent on trying to doctor it. Instead, I just poured into it the remainder of my juice from lunch and the wife's evil juice from the night before, shook it up, poured myself a glass and took a big sip. It was definitely worse than the juice I tried earlier, but still not the worst. I finished the glass, then went and brushed my teeth, cause the aftertaste was not enjoyable. Sucks to be me, cause there's at least two more glasses in that container, the wife won't touch it and those veggies and fruits cost way too much to just pour it down the drain. We'll just have to learn to juice better next time.

The wife says she intends on getting back on the juicin' horse as of tonight. She just needed food for her brain today.

Still no headaches from caffeine loss. However, I have been especially itchy. I woke up last night itching and scratched until the itches were bumps. It was like having scabies or something. I wonder if there's something I'm juicing that my system isn't fond of, or if I just really do have scabies.

As if that wasn't a gross enough thought, I'm now at the end of day 5 of this thing and I've not stopped pooping yet. Evidently my wife's occasional claims that I'm full of shit have some merit to them after all.