Fresh Squeezed Orange Juice

fresh squeezed orange juice

I’ll get to the fresh squeezed orange juice in about 500 words, bear with me because I need to grumble first. Is it just me, or have you noticed that “fresh” fruits and vegetables don’t have any flavor anymore? Everyday food, like apples don’t taste like an apple, sometimes I feel like I am just eating a cold, watery, fiber sphere. I’ve been complaining to friends and hearing that they feel the same way too. I believe that food is over-processed, over-engineered, made to grow faster and then preserved to last longer. It is to the point where food doesn’t even resemble the taste of what it should be. Actually, it’s worse, it doesn’t taste like anything at all. These days, you have to smother food with condiments, sauces and dressing to get it to have any flavor. And then it tastes like what you smothered it with. Can I have a burger with that ketchup?

I tolerated the food until I got a wake up call a few years ago. The turning point for me was when my family and I visited my aunt at her little farm located in Florida. During our stay, we were all treated to the best homemade meals we’d had in years. What was different? Everything we ate was grown on her farm. Amazing, right? The only exception was the organic meat that she had bartered with a neighbor in exchange for eggs from her chickens. It was my first authentic farm-to-table experience and it was so memorable. To this day, I still talk about how the food tasted. It wasn’t just that she’s a skilled chef – I could tell that the food she was preparing was totally unprocessed. Even the color of the food was darker and more vibrant.

Sidebar: Last night, I was watching tv and I saw a commercial for Yoplait and it features strawberries as a fruit that you can add to the breakfast. As I am watching, I noticed that all the strawberries are almost completely white inside. I found a link to the 15-second commercial if you want to see what I mean. I’m pretty sure that strawberries are not supposed to be all white in the inside. I can’t imagine that the white part tastes like anything, and the white part makes up 95% of the strawberry.

| this is what farm fresh strawberries look like when you slice them, bright and vibrant with color |

I had no idea I was so passionate about this topic, if you are still reading, congratulations for hanging in there. I also wanted to mention that during our visit to the farm, one of the best things my aunt made was Kale Chips. We inhaled them and I blogged about it here if you are interested in learning how to make them.

You made it! Now we finally get to the topic of today’s blog, fresh squeezed orange juice. It’s one of the many things we had while we were at the farm that left a lasting impression. I know it is a simple concept, but juicing oranges to make orange juice is one of the things you can do in your home to getting something real. Today, most of us can get food anywhere at any time of day and sometimes I wonder how far it has traveled and what it has gone through to get on my plate. I so admire farmers who grow their own food and know exactly where their meal came from. Living off your land must be a very cool feeling.

One of the highlights of going on a tropical vacation is having fresh squeezed orange juice at breakfast. There is nothing like it. I’ve sampled all the “not from concentrate” juices at the supermarket, but they all pale in comparison. I decided not to wait for our once a year vacay and took matters into my own hands. On a whim, I purchased an orange squeezer at Whole Foods, grabbed a bag of oranges and decided to make my own orange juice from here on out. If you do not have one, you can purchase an orange squeezer for less than $10.00. Making your own orange juice is self-explanatory, but here are a couple of tips. Make sure the oranges are cold, place one half of an orange in the squeezer pulp side down. Placing the orange in this orientation actually yields the most juice because you are turning the orange inside out. You can juice into a measuring cup with a spout, and you will need three or four oranges to make one glass of orange juice. The kiddos love helping out and I like the positive message it sends to them about taking a little extra time to transform one thing, into something else. Delicious, and packed with important vitamins, the extra step is totally worth it.