The juicer should have been my carry on.

I got my juicer for Christmas.  My awesome mother-in-law gave it to me.  She has one from the 80s that is slow and cumbersome and not worth the trouble, so she got me one to see if she wants to update hers.

The answer is yes. yes she does.

I only had one day with my juicer before we had to pack it up and ship it back to Virginia (we spent Christmas in Utah with our respective extended families.  Yes, it was fun, yes, it was exhausting, yes, we DID sleep until noon today, thanks for asking.).  It wasn't even a day, really, more like one quick morning.

I juiced apples, pears, grapefruit, clementines, cranberries, blackberries, and grapes.  Not all together, and not all at once, but once I got started, I kind of couldn't stop.  I was pulling things out of my MIL's fridge thinking,  "What ELSE can I juice?" Because the juice?  It was awesome.

And I got so excited because in preparation for the juicer, I've been buying real juices at Trader Joe's, and I gotta be honest, straight cranberry juice kinda sucks.

But freshly juiced cranberries mixed with freshly juiced clementines?  Di-VINE.

Unlike kale and yogurt and banana smoothies that taste, as we've already established, like banana soaked gym soaks, this stuff is delicious.

My husband packed up the juicer the day before we left to have it shipped home.  It's not a huge appliance, but it's heavy, and it is going to take about 8 days to ship.  My husband paused and said, "Are you sure you want to ship this?  We could rig it up so you could carry it on the plane."

"Why would I want to carry that thing on the plane?" I snorted, thinking my husband was nuts.  We were going to embark on a cross country plane ride, with 2 kids, 3 suitcases, 4 backpacks, 1 laptop, an Ipad and a plane change in Memphis.  How on earth would we wrangle a juicer with all of that?

My husband pointed out that I was already so addicted to my new toy that those 8 days would feel very very long.

I spent our first evening home devouring the juice recipe book I got with my juicer.  And this morning, recovering from a holiday travel body hangover and desperately wishing for some fresh orange juice, I said to my husband, "We should have carried the juicer on the plane."

And he gave me the knowing look he has, the look that says I should trust everything he ever says, because he is the ultimate Heather Whisperer, and knows me better than I know myself.

Stay tuned for juice recipes.  And if you have a juicer already, throw some clementines and cranberries in there for me.

***NUTRITIONAL NOTE:  I understand that juicing isn't a cure for PKD, and that it doesn't and shouldn't replace healthy eating, and that eating a full orange is in fact probably better than drinking the juice, that the claims that our bodies absorb the nutrients faster from juice than from eating an entire orange are spurious at best. I'm adding juice to my diet because I think it will help with some of the issues I have with early satiety, and because I think it will help my family be exposed to a wider variety of fruits and veggies.  And, also, because it's delicious.