Vegetable Juices

I am not a real fan of juicing, simply because it has never been introduced to my taste buds and requires a bit of work. Having a vegetable garden however gives me the opportunity to create juices from freshly picked veg, do the juicing and benefit from all the goodness very quickly. I have tried apple and pear before but todays juice was a bit of an interesting combination:

2 small beetroots
1 cucumber
2 apples

It yielded 1 pint of blood red juice which tasted refreshing and sweet. As I have another 5 cucumbers growing which will require eating soon, using them in juice is an alternative. I have no recipes available that pickle cucumbers or store them in any other way so if you have any suggestions please let me know. It is the height of summer here and apart from freezing beans and zucchini, the pumpkins are growing the size of grapefruits, tomatoes show promise of ripening. I keep wanting to go and pick berries but its either too hot or threathening to rain and I hear my grandma's voice saying

No don't pick soft fruit when it shows rain, as all the bugs climb inside.

Seems good advice and as the cats were hanging around the kitchen today I thought, not today.
I still see plenty of sunshine but I trust the cats, or else they are just lazing about because it is too hot. In that case, maybe it is too hot to pick fruit as well......

This morning instead I ventured out to the local farmers market which opened at 9.30 am and there was a queue of people outside. The rush to the vegetable stand was impressive ( you would think it was rationed, which it probably is), and the system they used to speed up service was novel When you enter you are given a number and a small piece of card on which the stall holders write down what you buy and then you pay at the exit. I think this is interesting because it will show them what on average sells quickly, what amount of money is spent on average visit, and also solves the waiting times at each booth.
I came away with some raspberries ( as I did not pick any as yet), some different types of bread, some cheese and a ready made cake for evaluation purposes. I love making cakes but as the chickens are on strike here due to the hot weather conditions, I bought one......this gives me the opportunity for quality control on cakes sold at farmers markets and the boys will appreciate some variety.

Weeding was also attempted in the shade and it goes a lot quicker when you plug yourself into an ipod and listen to podcasts......