Wheatgrass tastes like something it rhymes with

If anyone tells you that wheatgreass juice tastes good, I think you can be fairly certain of two things: 1) this person has your best interests at heart; and 2) this person is lying.

I conducted my first wheatgrass juicing experiment Thursday morning. I 'harvested' (chopped off with scissors) half of my crop and fed it to the juicer. This produced about three drops of juice, so I cut down the rest and chucked that in too.

Growing and juicing wheatgrass is an engaging activity for the senses...the grass is the green of healthy, living things, and I have admired it every morning while I eat breakfast. I played with the stalks before their little haircut, the clean soft grass made me wish I had a whole field of the stuff to play in. But none of these little tinglings of activity could compare to the smell of wheatgrass being juiced.

Think of freshly mowed lawn, but one-hundred times concentrated. The smell billowed out to fill every bit of my apartment, despite having very little to show for my efforts. The Omega beast had spit out about one and a half tablespoons of liquid grass stain. It was not appetizing.

While in Venice a few years ago I ordered the local speciality - Venetian Cuttlefish. Squid, prepared in its own ink. The sauce was a deep opaque shade of black and began to congeal the minute it was set in front of me. While the flavour was mild and almost pleasant, I feared that somehow the colour of this oddity would cause my stomach to revolt, as if it could detect that this was the colour of dirt, rather than normal digestible food. I felt a similar fear looking at the wheatgrass juice.

And I looked at it for a looooooooong time before deciding that it was time to get cracking so I wouldn't miss the bus to work. Two gulps, and I was out the door. Ugh. I could taste the tangy grass in the back of my throat all morning. (Is this how cows feel??) I must admit, I did not savour the taste - I tossed it back and swallowed as quickly as I could manage. I did detect a hint of sweetness, but mostly I felt as though I were drinking a barn.

I expect it will get easier with practice. To accomplish this though, I need to step up production in a serious way. More seeds, more trays...I don't see how I'm going to be able to do this every morning, but if I could manage a few times a week I think I will be satisfied.

Of course the scientific research regarding the actual benefits of wheatgrass is still pretty sketchy. There are a lot of claims being made, of course, but hard science has yet to offer judgement. All the same, growing wheatgrass is a novel and enjoyable hobby, and the idea at present is to get more green stuff in me, which wheatgrass certainly does.