I grew up with a health obsessed mother. No sweets, no cokes, no bread (this was pretty advanced thinking for the 70's). Fruit for breakfast, fruit for camp care packages (the counselors never made me share), fruit in the morning, fruit in the evening, and I'm surprised no fruit for supper time.

And then she discovered the juicer. We were scared. Fearful that we would be on liquid diets of juice for the rest of our lives. But once we tasted the sweet nectar of apples, bananas, mangoes, lemons and oranges, and strawberries all juiced together (this was before we had pineapplebanana juices from Dole) we were hooked. So pretty much every afternoon mom would juice up some juice and she would pour us a small, okay more like a shot glass size, of juice to suck down in two seconds. We always wanted more but she was stingy. I didn't understand why. Until my parents went out of town. I had free range of the juicer. and I juiced the minute they stepped out the door. I juiced a whole big pitcher full of juice, skins and all. That's a lot of fruit. And I greedily drank it all myself. About 20 minutes later I understood the wisdom of Mom not giving us more as I headed towards the powder room

This brings me to last night. Friends came over for tacos. They hadn't seen the house so I told them to come on over for tacos out of a box. Nothing fancy. Jen asked what could she bring? How about Margaritas!? she said. I have this new juicer and can make them from fresh lime juice. Sounds great as I told her my last memory of juicing. So they show up with the juicer, a pretty large stainless steel contraption and a basket of fruit. So we drank lime, orange, mango margaritas. The juice was so sweet, so delicious. Don't worry, I was ever mindful of my realization back in highschool. I never thought about making cocktails with the juicer way back when. But now I want to get a juicer for only that reason. She says she brings the juicer everywhere. Her husband is getting sick of lugging it around but they were certainly the life of the party with their cocktail buffet. Everyone mixed their drinks according to what juice they were feeling like at the time. We drank Tequila. Frank opted for Vodka, I think. he says he had a bad experience with Tequila-haven't we all. And J reminded him that he had a bad experience with whatever he was drinking at Uncle Bob and Aunt Liz's wedding in Chi Town. But I'll save that story for another time.