Orange Juice

I am crazy about orange juice.  Seriously.  I have to drink a glass of it in the morning before I feel fully awake and ready to start my day.  And my favorite, favorite thing in the world is freshly squeezed orange juice.  When I was pregnant with my girls I bought at least two bags of oranges a week and used my wonderful electric juicer to make a small pitcher of juice.  I think my body was craving the extra vitamin C and folic acid.  This morning I pulled a big bag of oranges out of the fridge, and the girls and I made some delicious, sweet OJ to go with our whole wheat waffles we also made.  It was oh so good.

When I eighteen years old, my friends LeAnn and Kim and I traveled around Europe for a month.  It was such an amazing time.  While we were wandering around the gardens of Versailles one humid June afternoon, we happened upon a little stand where a gypsy woman was selling glasses of fresh squeezed orange juice.  I was quite parched, and the sweet smell of oranges was too much to resist.  So I bought the largest size glass and watched this heavy-set woman with wild dark hair and lots of gold jingling jewelry squeeze a few oranges into a tall plastic cup.  And then I slowly slurped every last drop of that orange juice. And it was worth every franc (pre euro days).  We didn't linger at that stand too long-- we still had to see Marie Antoinette's little village.  But it is a moment in time that I vividly remember. 

Maybe that's when my love affair with orange juice began???  Or maybe it just grew stronger?