orange juice

All my life I have hated orange juice. I pick apple juice over orange juice on every flight I’ve ever boarded, and I’ve been travelling since I was 2 years old. Even when I started associating apple juice with the feeling of airsickness and eventually felt nausea at the mere thought of it, I still chose no juice over orange juice.

This all changed during Chinese New Year, though. As usual, my family found ourselves with more oranges than we could possibly eat, so my dad came up with the brilliant plan of homemade orange juice. Until now, I still don’t know why he thought of making orange juice when literally none of us particularly like orange juice, but I went along with it anyway. Of course, I was filled with trepidation at first. After all, everything about oranges had disgusted me up to that point in time. But my dad gathered a bag of mandarin oranges and pulled out our old juicer and sieve, recruiting me for this questionable adventure. We set to work squeezing oranges, with him squishing the flesh onto the juicer until it became liquid, and me filtering out the orange pulp and seeds before the juice went into a big mug.

It turned out to be incredible. I haven’t actually tried store-bought orange juice before, but I can guarantee that mine is better. It was much sweeter than I was expecting, and chilled to a perfect temperature. Most of all, when I drank it, I could sort of imagine living in some lovely countryside far away from here. I would live in a cute little cottage, and collect baskets of fruit so that I could make my own fruit juice to enjoy with my family every day. Life would be so much simpler.

There was something inherently charming about being in our little kitchen, putting in way more effort than necessary to filter out orange seeds and pretending to be an expert on the intricacies of the perfect cup of orange juice. I’m sure the juice tasted that much sweeter because I had a hand in its creation. Even if I’m in a high-rise apartment instead of some rustic, cozy cottage, my newfound appreciation for orange juice still remains.

I think I’ll ask for orange juice the next time I board a flight.