In pursuit of my lazy attempt to document all the odd cravings for things I can't have whilst here, I bring you the most recent: juice.

It's not that juice can't be had, here--suc is actually quite popular. The problem one often runs into is that "suc" refers to nearly everything in the non-alcoholic, non-dairy, bottled beverage range. Coca-Cola? Suc. Fanta? Suc. Tymbark Cool Grapefruit Roz? Yup ... suc. Precious little "suc" is actually juice, as we're used to it in the States, and when it is, it's usually cartoned in a UHT box-bag-pod-thing, primed for long-term storage, and sitting on an unrefrigerated shelf. Sure, it may taste more or less like juice, depending on how high the juice:sugar/water/"natural flavour" ratio is, but when it comes to vitamin content, you're screwed. Next to no health benefits whatsoever.

Nope, what I'm missing is the wonderful, tangy, fresh (and fresh-tasting) newly bottled juice from the hippy health food stores and the overpriced foody joints. Odwalla, Naked Juice, blends from Trader Joe's and Whole Paycheck. Fresh-squeezed tangerine juice that makes you never want to have another sip of carton OJ, protein smoothies with mango and banana and red fruit blends awash in fructose sweetness and tart lumps of pulp, the occasional raspberry seed to crunch on. I'd even go for a Jamba Juice right now, despite its bevy of frozen fruits and propensity to dump mystery powders into the mix.

True, this stuff is treated as well, albeit just pasteurised, not superheated and stamped with an expiry date in the next decade. So it's not as fresh-from-the-trees as I make it seem (though I did enjoy taking advantage of those opportunities when there were summer fruits aplenty as well), but it's a damn sight better than an expensive litre carton of something that bears, at best, a tenuous link to the natural analogue rather orgiastically printed in four-color process on the front, wet with dew and bursting with imaginary flavour.