mandarin orange juice

unlike you guys who grew up here in the states, or other first world countries for that matter, i did not grow up drinking fresh orange juice. i drank tang and it's philippine version, eight o' clock. i am not complaining about the powdered version because i still like them, but after being exposed to the fresh version of what i was used to, i kinda felt cheated by the orange juice gods. well, the fact is, oranges weren't very cheap back home and oranges weren't quite accessible.

it wasn't until i moved here to the united states and met shawn when i finally had my first taste of fresh orange juice. i was quite skeptical about the idea of something fresh boxed in the refrigerated section of the grocery store. i thought that it would end up tasting the same and it was such a ripoff considering they just add water to the perfectly good powdered version.
after i had my first taste of the real thing, my mouth felt very happy. comparison between the real thing and the powdered one is like comparing apples and bananas. they were two totally different species. there was this one time when i went to a hotel and they had freshly squeezed orange juice on the lobby all the time. as embarrassing at it was to keep going back to the front desk just to get the juice, i did not care. i grabbed my juice, drank it and went back for more. i was pretty sure the people waiting in line to check in thought i was a little too weird and the people working there thought i was classless. but i didn't care, i loved the juice.
when the grocery stores started stocking up with mandarin oranges, i thought, why not make juice out of it. it was pretty tedious squeezing the juice out of these little gems, but after tasting the finished results, it was all worth it. sticky fingers and all. the juice tasted like calamansi and lemonade together. it was awesome. i know that grocery stores still have these oranges, so you should go get yourself a bag of these cuties and squeeze away. tell me if you liked it, because i sure did.

mandarin orange juice

ingredients:
1 cup freshly squeezed mandarin orange juice
2 cups sparkling water, you can use regular water, too. i used regular,
but i know that using sparkling water would make it more fun
juice of half a lemon
about 1/4 cup sugar. you can use less or more depending on how sweet you want it.

instructions:
mix all of the ingredients together and serve chilled or over ice.