Ingredients:

½ bunch spinach

3 parsley sprigs

2 celery stalks

3 carrots

½ cucumber, peeled

1 yellow pepper, seeded

2 kiwis

1 grapefruit, peeled

2 apples (any variety, with stems removed)

Directions:

Position a pitcher under the extractor's spout and feed vegetables in one at a time. After juicing the vegetables, gently stir the liquid and serve with ice.

Yield: 40 ounces juice

Source: Debbie Adams

L ONGMONT -- Her husband's week away at spring break this year gave her the time she needed to do a so-called juice reboot.

Not everyone, after all, wants to swap alcohol, caffeine, refined sugar, carbohydrates and all processed food for liquified raw vegetables.

Though loaded with vitamins and minerals, the drink looks like the avocado-colored porcelain popular circa 1975 and tastes, well, too healthy for some without a sprinkling of salt or sugar in the mix.

Lift the glass to your nose and here comes the distinct aroma of celery, if celery can be considered aromatic.

Adding citrus to homemade recipes offsets the bitter flavor in leafy greens such as kale.

But still, this is no fruit smoothie.

It's a drink with a bit of an acquired taste aspect. And plenty of folks have overcome that aspect to consume other drinks such as coffee, which is neither salty nor sweet before doctoring.

So it was for Debbie Adams, 54, who tried it and liked it enough to stick with after her weeklong reboot in March.

Now, the photographer credits the reboot for improving her vision and helping her to shed 5 pounds, forgo all vitamin and mineral dietary supplements and feel more energetic without changing anything else about her lifestyle.

During the reboot, she drank the veggie juice and lots of water with solid fruits and vegetables and nothing else.

Now, she eats regular balanced meals --

minus processed foods -- between sipping from one or two 8-ounce glasses of juice a day.

To make fresh juice daily, she uses a countertop device called an extractor. It sounds like an industrial strength garbage disposal for the way it quickly chews through raw vegetables to separate juice from pulp.

Watching this noisy division may make some wonder what she does to get dietary fiber and what happens to the pulp.

But Adams said neither presents a problem.

"I still eat my salads," she said. "You can do both."

As for her waste footprint, she composts the pulp she pulls from the extractor.

By overcoming those two natural objections, she felt free to live into the life she wanted -- a life that she yearned for more after watching the film, "Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead," a few months before her juice reboot.

Visiting websites such as JointheReboot.com, ForksOverKnives.com, HungryforChange.tv and FoodRevolution.org continued to feed her curiosity and ultimately prompted her take the challenge of eating more healthfully and thoughtfully, she said.

Her husband still won't drink veggie juice with beets in the mix.

But he will drink everything else -- kale, chick peas, lentils and many other vegetables that would never fit on one plate, Adams said.

"You have to decide every day what you're going to put into your mouth," she said. "And for us, it's a lot easier to drink our vegetables than eat them."

Pam Mellskog can be reached at 303-684-5224 or pmellskog@

times-call.com.

Copyright 2012 Longmont Times-Call. All rights reserved.