I love summer. The garden has put plenty of food on the table and in the freezer, already. Now the real fun begins, as we enter the heart of garden, harvest season. I can’t wait for homegrown Marinara and Pico de Gallo. I like to work in the garden early in the morning, while it’s cool. The beets and carrots are ready now but they’ll keep growing for quite awhile, so I’ve been thinning them every few days, for some garden juice.
Growing and eating your own produce is an amazing tonic for what’s going on out there in the Great Wide World, presently. The connection to the Earth Mother revitalizes the spirit, making everyday an interesting and enjoyable experience. Just understanding that vegetables don’t come from a can with a Green Giant, or a microwave steam pouch. They are a gift from the Earth mother. One that we’ve taken for granted far too long. Our mission here at 3MPH.org is to spread the gospel of slowing down to; “the speed of life.” At walking speed your perception improves, the fog dissapates and you can see; who you are, what you want. That it’s all connected. We miss a lot of the beauty and sweetness in life, when we journey through too fast. At any speed greater than what can be achieved on a well ridden bicycle, we lose focus of our connection with nature. Slow, purposeful and with intent. Doesn’t that resonate? “The Speed of Life.”
A decade or so ago, I got all excited about juicing. I thought it was the fountain of youth or a magic tonic. I would do juice fasts for days at a time. I loved to create my own special blends using different root vegetables with just the right amount of fruit, to pull the sugars up and enhance the palette. I have discovered there is no real magic with juicing. It’s just one of the many ways to supercharge your nutrition using fresh vegetables. And it’s fun too. Whether you get them from your own garden or the local farmer’s market.
This time of year, I can get everything I need, in my backyard. For me there is something tremendously satisfying about that. The same satisfaction that comes from making a salad, a soup or an entire meal, with produce from our garden.
Earlier in the season, our 2 year old gooseberry patch produced a crazy amount of berries and I was dumping a couple handfuls into every juice. Our intention is to make wine and jelly each season from the gooseberries but they caught us off guard this year, We’ll get ‘em next year. The apricot trees should be producing by then too.
Back when I was a juicing fanatic, prowling the aisles of Whole Foods late at night, looking for the next victim, to feed my addiction, beetroot was commonly at the top of the list. It might have been an idea from Jitterbug Perfume; Tom Robbins best book, (imho). A couple of characters in the wonderful tale, live forever, imortalized by the amazing powers of the humble beetroot.
“The unhappy person resents it when you try to cheer him up, because that means he has to stop dwelling on himself and start paying attention to the universe. Unhappiness is the ultimate form of self-indulgence. When you’re unhappy, you get to pay a lot of attention to yourself. You get to take yourself oh so very seriously.” ― Tom Robbins, Jitterbug Perfume
“Jitterbug Perfume is an epic, which is to say, it begins in the forests of ancient Bohemia and doesn’t conclude until nine o’clock tonight [Paris time]. It is a saga, as well. A saga must have a hero, and the hero of this one is a janitor with a missing bottle. The bottle is blue, very, very old, and embossed with the image of a goat-horned god. If the liquid in the bottle is actually the secret essence of the universe, as some folks seem to think, it had better be discovered soon because it is leaking and there is only a drop or two left.”
“Our individuality is all, all, that we have. There are those who barter it for security, those who repress it for what they believe is the betterment of the whole society, but blessed in the twinkle of the morning star is the one who nurtures it and rides it in, in grace and love and wit, from peculiar station to peculiar station along life’s bittersweet route.” ― Tom Robbins, Jitterbug Perfume
Read it. If you’ve already read it, you should read it again. I’m not telling you what the secret essence is but I’ll give you hint. It’s purple. It’s packed with essential nutrients and a great source of fiber, folate (vitamin B9), manganese, potassium, iron, and vitamin C. It’s juice has been associated with numerous health benefits, including improved blood flow, lower blood pressure, and increased exercise performance.
We have trouble here, on the high plains with tomatoes due to the clay soil but we can damn sure grow beets. They love it here. I just planted a second set for fall juicing. Just in time for cold and flu season. We’ve heard that beetroot juice enhances immune response, keeping colds, flu and other lesser known corona shaped viruses at bay.
Most folks have never eaten beets raw, they tend to pickle them, roast them or over cook them and inadvertantly, turn them into baby food. In their raw form they are a very powerful antioxidant, that improves pulmonary health. They are rich in the nutrients that many folks with health problems are insufficent in. But they taste like dirt. The musky, earthy flavor, a favorite of Goat-Horned Gods and Goddesses.
I like the flavor but I like to add some sweet and spice too. In this case; carrots, cucumbers, an apple and some ginger. Mom said the Jitterbug Juice still tasted like dirt. And the base note was indeed unmistakably earthy beet, but there was also a nice tart, sweet apple top note and some spice from the ginger. Go juice some beets, folks. They’re a powerful gift from Mother Earth.
And if you enjoy a good read, check out Jitterbug Perfume, you won’t be dissapointed.