Was it worth it?

I think I noted in one of my previous posts that I will just about try anything that anyone suggests that might help with my RA and inflammation. As you all know I have changed my diet and mostly eat food that is considered anti-inflammatory and stay away from foods, for the most part, that is known to cause inflammation. Sometimes that is easier said than done. On Sunday, Chip cooked a pot of spaghetti sauce, and I had a container of gluten-free noodles, so I was excited. See, I can be with my family when they get cook-out milkshakes or dairy queen blizzards, but I have a hard time not eating Chip’s venison spaghetti sauce and chili too.

As usual, his venison spaghetti sauce was delicious, and I was a happy girl, that is until the wee hours of Monday when I woke up with my hands hurting so badly that I could hardly move them, must less pull the covers up over me. Ugh, I thought, I know what did this. The spaghetti sauce was the culprit! Though it was made with venison which I can have, it had tomatoes and sugar, peppers and such in it, things I know I am not supposed to have. Was it worth this pain, it was at the time, now I am not so sure.

I had read a lot about celery juice and all the benefits about 6 weeks ago and decided to give it a try. Everything I read suggested drinking the celery juice for 7-days. Most people reported after 7-days they continued to drink the celery juice because they felt better. So, I am not a huge fan of celery. Now that is not saying that I don’t like it, but if I am going to eat celery, I prefer it to be with chicken salad on it or pimento cheese back when I was eating cheese. But to just eat a stalk of celery, not me, but Chip loves to shake salt on it and crunch away.

I did not have a juicer and read that you could “juice” using a powerful blender and then drain the pulp off. I have a ninja blender which is super powerful, so I elected to not spend money before knowing if I was going to stick to this or not. So, for 7-days, every morning, I would spend time blending my celery, draining it through a fine-mesh strainer, then pushing on the pulp left behind to get more juice out. The key is to have your pulp almost dry. This was doable but time-consuming. I had read about a nut milk bag when I was doing my research, so I thought I would give this a try. I googled to see if any store in town had one and they did not, so I ordered a nut milk bag off Amazon and was eager to give it a try. It was definitely worth the few bucks that it cost me. I would recommend this over the strainer anyway. You literally pour everything out of the blender into the nut milk bag and squeeze all the juice out. It was not as messy as it may sound. I am not sure if my hands had been hurting like they did today that I could have squeezed the bag, though.

Nut Milk Bag Reusable 3 Pack 12″ x 10″ Cheesecloth Bags for Straining Almond/Soy Milk Greek Yogurt Strainer Milk Nut Bag for Cold Brew Coffee Tea Beer Juice Fine Italian Nylon Mesh Cheese Cloth

In the meantime, I went into one of my favorite thrift stores in Danville, Helping Hands in the Sherwood Shopping Center. This is a 100% volunteer ran Thrift Store as all the profits go back into the community. I love this thrift store. Anyway, I found a juicer for $8.00. The volunteer clerk at the store helped me check to make sure it ran, and it did, so I bought it. I washed it up, which took a while as I don’t think whoever donated it had done so, it was pretty nasty. It was so easy to use and has definitely made my life easier. I always wash my celery, cut the top off first, a close cut to not waste any, just enough to trim off the browning edges and then the bottom.

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Then you simply add it to the juicer. My used juicer did not come with a container, but a measuring cup works just fine.

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Here are the pictures to show how messy the machine is afterward, but as long as you clean it up as soon as you are finished it is easy peasy.

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I give the left overs to the chickens, they like the cut parts, but not so much the pulp. I guess I have already got the good stuff out.

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I had watched a video on the juicer and new of its shortcomings, but it was worth it for me. Since then I have reviewed other machines and honestly, at the end of using them, they are all a hot mess too, so I will keep mine for now. It took me exactly 20 minutes from beginning to end, that includes taking my celery out of the refrigerator, washing, cutting, juicing, pouring into containers and then cleaning all the parts. During that time, I also had to let the dogs in the house, which means I had to re-wash my hands.

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So does the celery juice work. My honest opinion is it does for me. When I started the day, I was in a lot of pain in my hands. Once I drank my juice while working in my home office, I was busy, so I did not time how long it took to work or anything but a couple of hours later I realized my hands were not hurting. Now, I think that is a combination of things. First, I did not take any medication at all, but I believe “working” through pain as for me it loosens up my joints and they do feel better. So, a combination of the celery juice and working helped. Could just working have been enough? I do not know the answer to this, but I am not willing to give up my celery juice to try it.

So, in this time of the Covid-19, I was not worried at all that I would be able to get enough celery, as who in their right mind would want to hoard celery. That is until we went to Sam’s Club on a Sunday, like we usually do and attempted to buy, four packs like I always do. When we tried to check out on our telephone, like we always do, it would not let us. We thought perhaps it was because I was buying two boxes of Mucinex (I have a lot of allergy issues), so I took one of the boxes of Mucinex through the checkout and it still would not let Chip check out with his telephone. One of the super nice Sam’s club employees came over to help us out. We basically had to take everything out of the buggy, go through the self-checkout to discover it was the celery holding us up. What? Celery? Yes, we were only allowed to buy one package of celery as there was a limit on all vegetables. So now I have become a little more panicky about getting my celery. What if they restrict leaving your home as they did in China? How would I make it without my celery juice?

Well, I happen to put this concern out on Facebook, and a friend came to the rescue. She told me about using Celery Powder that is made from just that Celery Powder. She mixes it up in a glass of water and drinks it every day. I decided to do a little research and lo and behold the Celery Powder she uses comes from a company that I was already very familiar with and love a lot of their products. I had not purchased anything in a while and did not know about some of the new products such as the Celery Powder. The company is called “It Works.” You may have heard of “that crazy wrap thing” that was popular a few years ago. It still is, and a lot of people use the wraps, it is just not front-page news right now. But their products are amazing. I swear by their hair and nails supplement. It literally helped my widows peak I was forming, grow back in. I probably have a before and after pictures, but I hate pictures of me so I will refrain from sharing. I still had an account with the It Works company that I had set up with another friend years ago and was able to order the Celery Powder.

My Celery Powder actually came in the mail today, but I am not going to use it until I either run out of celery or until we are able to start back camping or me traveling for my work. The Celery Powder will work great for me being on the road because otherwise, I would have to do a lot of juicing ahead of time. For me after the second day, my celery juice is not quite as good as the first day, I would not want to have celery juice that was as much as 3-4 days because sometimes I am gone from home that long. I already look like a gypsy dragging my suitcase, work bags, and a cooler of food into the hotel, so I surely do not want to drag a juicer along with me. My juicer is pretty loud so I am sure the person next door would not appreciate my juicing in my hotel room at 6:00am. Therefore, Celery Powder is going to work perfectly for me. I hope it tastes just like my celery juice. I will let you know once I have tried it out.

If you would like more information on the Celery Juice, or all the amazing products the company has to offer, contact https://www.facebook.com/diane.robinson.108889, she will tell you all about how these products have helped her family for years improve their health.

Will I eat Chip’s venison spaghetti sauce and his amazing chili again, yes, I probably will, but I will continue to counter it with a big old glass of celery juice.