The heaviest bags we haul home from the Hollywood Farmers Market are those that hold the citrus for Larry to hand-squeeze into juice for Sunday brunch.
He uses the Juice-O-Mat we found at the Pasadena City College Flea Market. My mother used one just like it to make fresh orange juice in the 1970s.
The juice Larry makes is more interesting.
He recently combined tangelos and blood oranges with Sierra Gold, Dancy and Page tangerines. Our niece Tracie joined us for brunch and said it was the best juice she ever tasted.
Commercially manufactured juice is formulated to always taste the same. How boring. Our juice varies from week to week, depending on the varieties of fruit available and how sweet or tart each piece of fruit is.
We only drink orange juice on Sundays. On other days we eat our breakfast fruit. Juice is not a whole food - it lacks fiber and the nutrients in the pith.
Also, it's important to chew fruit in order to fully digest it. Fruit is a carbohydrate, and the human body uses the enzymes in saliva to start the carbohydrate-digesting process. Swallowing fruit as juice or smoothies prevents the salivary enzymes from doing their work. The pancreatic enzymes in the small intestine have to do all the digesting of the juice. This is hard on the body and hard on the pancreas.
So it is better to eat fruit on a daily basis, and save fruit juice for a treat.
And if you squeeze your own juice from a variety of citrus, it will be a very special treat.
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