Juice Time

5

Sunday 04 January, 2015 by Uncle Spike

With fruit hanging off every tree in sight, we are rarely short of fruit juice, that’s for sure. Never do we buy the commercial stuff, partly due to cost, but also most are so full of preservatives, added colours or are even made from water added to fruit pulp, so with respect, no thanks.

Each year we have fresh juice from oranges (summer and winter), clementines, lemons (also summer and winter varieties), grapes, and pomegranate to name a few. The best thing is to nip outside, grab an armful and juice it straight off – yum.

However, that is not always possible, say when it’s out of season, or when there’s a storm, or perhaps it’s just not convenient. So each harvest season, I pick a load of fruit just for juicing. As long as the fruit is healthy, it really doesn’t matter what size, colour or shape it is – I’ll juice anything…

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First of all I sort them and chuck our any that have gone soft, perhaps due to an insect, or just overripe and gone past it. Then I wash them quickly by hand. I don’t use any sprays, so it’s just a matter of being health concious as with any food preparation.

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I don’t have a large industrial machine; they cost ridiculous amounts here, nor do I use an electric juicer. Most of the smaller ones couldn’t handle the volume I process, plus, why waste electricity. Also, who wants to hear that noise for hours on end? I prefer a good old manual press whilst listening to the birds chirp in the trees.

I have killed three machines so far, just from extreme overuse (like processing 200kg (440 lbs), so a friend of ours brought this 7kg (16lb) Orange-X monster over a couple of years back from the UK. Try as I might, I’ve not been able to destroy it!

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The juice is not treated in any way at all, just juiced by hand, and frozen the same day in a big chest-freezer the lives on the kitchen balcony. We have not been without fresh (or even frozen) juice in the past five years. 

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