Day 30:

Juice: Bellyful

Bellyful:
3 Apples
1/4 White Cabbage
1/4 Small Fennel Bulb
1 Small Bunch of Mint

This is a warm, yet crisp and very refreshing. This is a great mid-morning snack. Sweet enough that it still feel like breakfast, but substantial enough that it can pass for lunch. 

Fennel, my dear friends fennel or foeniculum vulgare. A vegetable I really had never eaten until recently. Fennel is a hardy perennial (a plant which grows back every year) and a member of the  Apiaceae family (formerly the Umbelliferae) - meaning it is related to carrots, parsley, dill and more - like over 3,000 more species. Needless to say it is a large family.

Fennel looks kinda like a cleaner, nicer version of celery root. It is a white or pale green blub with stalks protruding from it, which are topped with feathery green leaves. In season during, both fall and spring, but fennel can be found all year long in most stores around the US. However, you may find the taste is the best during the spring and fall.

Fennel is crunchy in texture and slightly sweet and has an anise-like taste. Often fennel and anise are listed as the same plant by people (mainly on the internet), however they are not the same plant. They are related - both members of the Apiaceae Family (I told you it was a large family), but they are different plants. The confusion stems from the fact that "the whole plant (bulb, stalks, fronds) of fennel is consumed while it is usually just the seeds from the anise plant that are eaten..." (Source)

Fennel Seeds

Fennel is an amazing vegetable resource to have in your fridge. Full of vitamin C, potassium, manganese, folate (also called Folic Acid is a B-complex vitamin) and a variety of other phytonutrients, fennel has a wide variety of health benefits. The essential oils in fennel - the oils that give fennel its anise smell - "stimulate secretion of digestive and gastric juices, reduce inflammation of stomach and intestines and facilitates proper absorption of nutrients from the food" (Source), aiding any symptoms of indigestion, constipation, flatulence, diarrhea. In fact, chewing fennel seeds after a meal is a common practice in India.  Hence the name of this wonderful juice. Fennel has also been shown to help with colic, respiratory disorders, menstrual disorders, eye care, bad breath, hair loss and more, so it is not just for the intestinal track.

Emotional Lifestyle:

Recently, I watched a very interesting and disturbing documentary called Farmageddon (2011). It is about small farms being unlawfully forced to shut down by the USDA for unexplained reasons (most of the time). It is a little long an repetitive, but the information is sound. It is an interesting look at the government attempting to control what people eat, by controlling one's access to it.

If you are from New York, this has been a big topic here, as Mayor Bloomberg has been trying to put in laws about soda and junk food. However, this documentary is looking at small farms all around the country who are providing healthy, organic food for (mainly) their local communities and are being shutdown. Even when a farm has the right paperwork and their animals tested, the government has been threatening, harassing and killing livestock on these farms...for what reason?...it is often unexplained by anyone. It is interesting (though a little long), but definitely worth the time.