Luckily, the Evans School has the most wonderful Career advisory staff. I am one of the fortunate alumni to know and have worked with Tamara (current), Barry (past), and Heather (past) in Career Services. Seriously, these three people are some of the most professional, passionate, skilled, and generous career counselors around! I was able to practice my interview with Tamara and really identify ways in which I could be comfortable with discussing my experience and how I could add value to the Association's Policy Department.
I was so nervous that I couldn't drink anything but water. So it wasn't until after my interview that I decided to tackle my first juice. And let me tell you, it did not go well.
This was a surprise, because a couple of the recipes in my Juice Bible actually talk about juicing with frozen fruit, which I believe is where the problem lay with my earlier attempt. I decided to bag the menu I had planned for today, because the first recipe called for both onion and garlic, and I think it would be better for anyone with olfactory senses that I make that juice at the end of the day when I'm by myself. =)
Going down the list, I also nixed making the second juice because it called for broccoli, and I used up my supply yesterday. Doh! Third time's the charm, right? I had all the ingredients, it would make me smell like strawberries and mint, and it sounded really yummy. My tummy was signaling that we definitely had a winner!
Strawberry Mint Juice
- 1/2 large pineapple, peeled, cored and cut into cubes or slices (I used 1/3)
- 1 cup strawberries
- 1 pear (cut into quarters)
- 30 mint leaves *Adapted from Reboot Your Life.™
The strawberries were juicing nicely and the mint was adding a wonderful aroma to the kitchen, but the pineapple was not cooperating. In fact, my Breville did not enjoy the frozen pineapple at all. It made shaved pineapple ice in the container, but no juice was spit out. In fact, there were a couple of times I thought that I might have broken my juicer from the noises it made. I once hear that if you have a lot of wet pulp in your juicer you can try running it through again to extract more juice. I tried this, unsuccessfully, with the pineapple shaved ice. Nothing was yielded. And finally, I gave up.
Needless to say, I was pretty frustrated. I had essentially wasted almost 1/3 of a pineapple on nothing. I, did, however, have some lovely juice that came out. So it was not an entirely wasted endeavor, which is nice.Regardless, at the time I wasn't seeing the good stuff. I was in a funk. I felt like I hadn't done a good job on my juice and quite possibly my interview, and I was not pleased. Then came the change...
I heard a knock on my door and saw that a deliver person was holding a box of flowers. I seriously thought he had the wrong house until I looked at the label. Inside were the most gorgeous orchids I
had seen in years. In fact, the last time I had seen these particular orchids were at my Grad School graduation. But there was something else familiar about them. I just couldn't put my finger on it.
I took out the flowers and accompanying note and read the sweetest message from my friend Chi. She was hoping to bring a little spring time into my home, like she used to do with her own office when we worked together at The Brattle Group. And that's when the light bulb went off: Of course! These were the types of flowers Chi used to have in her office in the spring!
I used to love visiting Chi's office to chat, drink tea, and look at the gorgeous flowers she had.
Now I have the gorgeous flowers to share with visitors!
From then on, I felt more relaxed, optimistic, and happy. My next juice was a nice, light juice to keep those feelings up: Cucumber Cooler.**
Cucumber Cooler
- 1 cucumber
- 2 cups green grapes
- 1 handful fresh borage leaves (I didn't have these or know what they were, so I used spinach)
- 1 handful fresh mint
- 2 apples
- 1/2 lemon
*http://blog.williams-sonoma.com/30-days-of-juicing/
**Page 185, "The Juicing Bible: Second Edition," Pat Crocker
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