You Call That Juice?

One of the things I find most interesting about Argentina is the differences in the kind of food they eat. I have yet to find a kind of food that I don´t like but I have deffinetelly found a lot that are way different from what I have grown up eating. My favorite example of this is juice. In Washington, I have the pleasure of living on an apple farm sort of thing. That means that each fall we make fresh apple juice from our own trees and freeze it for the winter. But even without living with hundreds of trees, I can garantee you can find more than you can drink of fresh juice in Washington. And even if it is imported orange juice from Florida atleast it is still made from actual oranges. I am sorry to say that what Argentinians know as juice is not. The first time I went to pour myself a nice cup of apple juice with my morning cereal, I was surprised to find that it was white. Kind of like a watered out milk. Hmmm....ignorantly I figured that was just the color of apples here or something. After tasting it (and almost spitting it back up with surprise at the flavor) I found it was deffinetelly nothing like apple juice. As you might have guessed, I figured something was wrong with it. Maybe it was old or had something else poured into the carton. But after asking my Mama about it, she explained that the juice here is "fake" or atleast most of the juice is. It turns out that the apple juice here (or atleast the kind you can easily buy in stores) is actually milk based with apple flavoring (that would explain the white coloring!) It also comes in a nice carton decorated with Barbies or Race Cars; that should have been my first sign something was up! :) A few weeks ago I got to taste "real" orange juice which was deffinetelly made from real oranges but unfortunetelly for my taste buds it had absolutely no sugar and tasted....well, not at all sweet! It has taken me a while to adjust to this thing they call juice. :) And although I still can´t manage to drink the apple juice with out worrying I am drinking rotten apples, I have found that peach juice is much more to my liking. Maybe it is cause I have never drunken peach juice that much before and therefore don´t have a lot to compare it to. All in all, I am finding things I love about Argentina and things I won´t be missing very much. Whether it is apple juice, the buses, my family, or the cute little dog that always sleeps on the side walk outside our front door. But no matter the outcome, it is always a funny process to figure them out. :)