Ode to My Juicer/Steamer

I tend to get a little fanatic about what I deem as amazing appliances, so brace yourself. I should probably do an Ode to My Vitamix too:)

So after the ladies at the grape stand told us about the juicer/steamer, I got one for Christmas. A few years went by and then this year I decided that I needed to make juice for Little Man. Ninety pounds of blueberries later, I was ready.

Can I just say that this thing is absolutely AMAZING! I felt like Wonder Woman when I was canning juice. You put the berries in the top level of the pot (a strainer), under that is an empty level when you first put it on the stove (it's where your juice will gather), and the last level is your boiling water. It's kind of like a double boiler in triple:)

There's this little hose attached to the second level and after about 40 minutes of processing time (changes- depending on what you're juicing) out comes your juice. The clamp on the hose is pretty hard to use, but my husband says he can order me a new one out of one of his bee catalogs for like $1.50.

I just kept stepping back and staring at my canned juice. It looks (and smells) fantastic. We had some fresh juice, and I got 52 pints of blueberry juice for the coming year. I think I will do apple juice and maybe blackberry juice too.

We have tons of blackberries at our house, but picking them is a real pain. And Little Man might be more squirmy this year than he was last year.

I can see why those ladies acted like canning juice was a cinch and there was no other way to do it. I also noticed that I had difficulty finding info about canning juice online. It's probably because everyone's given up on it if they're still using cheesecloth to do it. I really appreciate the simplicity of it after the disaster with the grape juice:)

I do have to say that is one (ever so tiny) glitch with the juicer/steamer. You can't let it boil dry, and it's really hard to get the top levels off to add more water if you're by yourself. You can also accidentally get juice over into the bottom level if the juice level in the second layer gets too high. This doesn't matter at all (aside for lost juice- which probably isn't much, if you're paying attention to the levels) unless you boil the bottom pan dry. Which you guessed it- I did. Oops.

The strange smell of the boiled over juice was what tipped me off. Thank goodness, I guess. Now I see that I will just have to unload it every time I start a new load and refill the water. So besides scrubbing the burnt juice off the pan and a small amount of juice that I think tasted like smoke, but my husband drank fresh anyway, I have to say it was still a great experience.

Just when I start to think I'm too amazing something like this always happens to me. I think it's God's way of keeping me humble:)