Juicy

Gosh. I just can't get over how smart I am. It's a little embarrassing. Because I'm modest. But it's so obvious, even to me, who is so self-effacing.

I was thinking about juicing. You know, juicing fruit and vegetables. Get those juicy vitality-promoting nutrients, without all the chewing. You of course are just in love with chewing -- bovine cud-monger, chawing away mindlessly in front of your gameshows. Do pork rinds even need to be chewed? Don't they just disintegrate in your mouth, into clumps of fatty goo? You don't even have to swallow. It just non-stop dribbles down your gullet. But I'm not like that. I'm, you know, human. Not degenerated and completely degraded, animalized by appetite and emotion. So sad. So sad, your ruminant existence. But there you've gone and steered the conversation toward yourself again. Geez. What an ego.

The point I was trying to get to is juicing. There are two problems with it. First, it's a sort of predigestion, so that the sugars are absorbed all at once, which is a problem in terms of insulin spiking. That big carb rush into blood sugar is the reason you have the shape and texture of some sort of exotic Nicaraguan gourd. You look like you're fattening yourself up for the space aliens. The problem is solved by not ingesting more than a few hundred calories of juice at a time.

The other problem is that the juice itself is only a fraction of the actual nutrition. Vitamins and minerals and enzymes are important. But in the cell wall, the fiber, there are virtually thousands of other nutrients, phytonutrients, that have, literally, untold health benefits. With standard juicing, that just goes into the trash. Seems wasteful.

The obvious solution, that some middlebrow, say, like you, would come up with would be to juice a salad and then add in the pulp again. Yeah, that would work. But juicing is such a hassle. So why not put it in a blender. Much easier. Problem is, chopping is not grinding. You'd just get a lot of confetti. Unchewed is undigested. Wasteful. Solution?

Freeze it. Slow freeze the spinach, the mustard leaves, the whatever. The reason a frozen carrot thaws out rubbery is that slow-formed ice crystals are long -- they puncture the cell wall, which can't hold fluid, and you have a limp carrot. Well, your carrot is always limp. What this does, though, is mash the confetti -- makes the nutrients in every cell available. Now put it in the blender and puree. Add some onion to give it a taste, sprouts cuz they're magic, whatever else, and you can drink your salad. And, being you, be sure to chug the Ranch Dressing, cuz you earned it. And a pint or two of sour cream -- dig in, Gordo. You only live once.

Isn't that amazingly smart? I just can't get over myself. Of course, who is there to compare myself to? You? The sun is not to be compared to space junk. Beep ... beep ... beeeeeeeeeeee


J