Reheat: Ride That Green Juice High
Edit note: With assistant editor Jess Kapadia out on vacation this week, we're rerunning some of her best What To Eat: Lunch columns, starting with a juice freakout.
Something happens when you drink a big green juice on an empty stomach. Something crazy. It starts as general discomfort in the abdominal region, which quickly spreads throughout your body. At some point, this discomfort becomes an all-encompassing, full-on body high you can't exhaust or shake. It's awesome.
What exactly is in this euphoria-inducing cocktail? Well, according to my 16-ounce Serious Green from Dig Inn (their chef beat Bobby Flay on Iron Chef America), it's a delightful algae-colored blend of romaine lettuce, cucumber, apple, kale, spinach, celery, parsley, lemon and ginger. And it is crack. It smells like a bouquet of vegetables and flowers. It tastes like a whole salad, lemon-ginger dressing included, all in one bite. I don't feel like a hippie, or even all that health conscious. I just feel invincible.
Debate the pros and cons of juicing all you like, I'm not babbling nonsensically with concentrated phyto-...uh, stuff running through my veins to help you retrofit your liver. Wait, what? Sorry, my liver was singing and I got distracted. All the garbage being purged from my system is making me hallucinate slightly. I should probably take another swig of the good stuff.
Whether you need a cleanse or not, a day or two of green juice will do you good. Or weird. I'm on day two and I'm feeling pretty weird. My skin looks nice. But I also started running in marathon territory yesterday, either out of nowhere or to join in on the fun, I'm not sure. But I don't find running fun in the least. If you were to tap me on the shoulder right now I'd probably scream "yes, I can copyedit that story before this column runs at 11:30 a.m.," bolt over to your desk, organize your cookbooks alphabetically, maybe cry a little and then copyedit the hell out of that thing!
So if you're at all interested in the tweaky rapture causing me to write like this in front of everyone, get as many vegetables as you can into a juicer, seriously, tell the juice hippie you just want everything in there or you'll knock him out, boycott food for a few days and see if that doesn't purple monkey dishwasher your Transformers McDonald's toy that's still on your desk from your intern's excursion to see if there are really apples in the new Happy Meal.