I have not been quiet because I have been away having some kind of operation or extreme weight loss therapy.  I have been working very hard and had visitors over the last 2 nights for dinner which left no time for blogging.  But thank you for those who showed concern.  We had these lovely girls over one night; Hannah and Laura who live next door.  Between Hannah and Lara we had a delicious supper.

We were all pleased to see them.

Last night we had our lovely neighbour on the other side over, Frances.  So way too much eating from me.

My package finally arrived.  It is a L’Equip Omni Juicer, just like this one here.  Or indeed here in this picture !  I worked from home today and got up early to get it all set up and to start juicing.

This is a single augur juicer so it takes longer than the centrifugal juicers commonly used on TV shows by excitable Americans but retains more of the nutrients in the fruits and vegetables. You have 2 jugs, one to collect the pulp and one the juice.  I did initially set them up the wrong way round but that was easily corrected. I wanted Harvey to share the first juice so it was more fruits than veggies; an apple, an orange and some spinach. Chug, chug, chug. You end up with a jug of pulp and jug of juice.  This is so much easier to clear up than my old one, I loved using it except you have to hold the ‘on’ button down which makes juicing slightly challenging and you really need 3 hands. As you can guess by the small size of my glass, harvey loved it so I only had a small glassful.  The flavour are wonderful compared to my old juicer.  Much fresher and cleaner tasting.  Excellent. I made myself a scrambled eggs with spinach and fresh tomatoes. I have wanted to do a weeks juice cleanse to break my sugar addiction which is really bad at the moment after 2 weeks of very lovely sugar coated birthday celebrations.  Due to work and social engagements, I have not even had one clear day to do that so I did my best today during the day.

At lunch time I made another juice and added some blue green algae.  Some of my kale has survived the rabbits and caterpillars so I juiced that. I juiced it with 2 sticks of celery, spinach, a cucumber and some strawberries. The tube you add the fruits/veggies in to is quite small so I have to cut the produce up more than I wanted to. This was quite challenging.  It was a horrible sludgy green colour and tasted a bit earthy so I added an orange which really helped. I also made good use of 2 courgettes from the garden and some halloumi. I sliced the courgettes thinly and a modest amount of halloumi and placed them in a ridged frying pan with some salt and pepper on top.I cooked them over a gentle heat for about 5-7 minutes before turning them for another 5 minutes,Served with juicy tomatoes it made a simple and delicious lunch.

My day then went a bit wrong and after an aborted Cheese and Wine evening I arrived home stressed and exhausted and hit the sugar big time.  One huge bar of chocolate and red wine.

I really want to do a juice fast, quite a severe one for a week to break the sugar habit and then add protein such as beans, sprouts, eggs, fish and lean meat to a juice and raw vegetable based diet.  I really need that time through to break the sugar habit and give myself a boost of a quick weight loss.  The weekend and week ahead look very busy but in a weeks time I think I can have a go then.  I really hope so!