Juicing Challenge: Overcoming the Fennel Resistance Movement

Catch a snatch from our forthcoming ‘Confessions of an Ageing Cyclist’ due out on 5 July, just in time for this year’s Tour de France!

The Juicing Challenge

When it comes to the juicer, some vegetables are more reluctant than others in playing their part in keeping your weight down and your body toned, ready for the next sporting challenge of the day.

Apples will step up to the mark and be pushed to their destiny without so much as a whimper.  Ginger, whilst resistant is only so because its density and inability to conceive of any other future than its usual inertness on the kitchen shelf.  Beetroot takes to the foray with an alarming degree of joie de vivre.  It’s blooding of the utensil and the juicer – it seems to take much unwarranted delight in plastering everything it comes into contact with.  All for the greater good of course.

Fennel though?  I’ve never encountered a vegetable which was so resistant to being pulped.  You put it down the feeder tube and before you know it jumps out of the tube, clearly alarmed at the grisly fate that it was looking at.  That spinning grater might look innocuous at high speed but the fennel clearly knows where it’s headed. You pop up bit down the tube feeder and out it jumps.  You put two pieces down and out they pop.  You resort to using larger pieces as it seems the smaller pieces are a bit risk averse when it comes to their contribution to the good of your body – but no difference.  The larger pieces fall apart into onion like layers but instead of making you cry, they just separate and dive for safety of the kitchen floor.

There’s not much that can be done with fennel when it comes to it.  Its resistance to being pulped is remarkable and you grudgingly feel respect for its survival instinct. No matter.  It will be boiled up in the evening, or failing that, merely diced into a tasty salad.  That’ll teach it to mess with my calorie counting.