Accidental Mimosa

Dearest Rachel –

There’s a place on the thoroughfare between our house and the folks’ place (as well as the church and the convalescent home Dad’s staying at) called Big Ange’s. It’s an authentic barbecue place, right down to the fact that it’s had its own smoker in the front of their parking lot for the longest time. It used to be somewhat irritating to come out of the fitness center smelling all that meat smoking away across the street – as if fasting and exercising didn’t make me hungry enough, there was that smell I had to deal with, especially in the summertime, when it carried so far in the air.

One of their side specialties is a blend of (supposedly – I would expect to find more pulp in it if it were true) “fresh-squeezed” lemon- and orangeade that they sell by the glass as well as by the gallon. And while the latter gets pricey in comparison to what one might buy in a store (if it were available in the first place), the fact remains that a gallon is as cheap as three glasses. So, since we’re usually buying for the whole group when I do pick up food from there, it’s a better deal to just go and buy the gallon.

All of which is perfectly good and well, but sometimes we don’t manage to finish the entire gallon in that first sitting. And since the bottle is a bit too tall for the kitchen refrigerator, I put it away into the old one that we still have in the sunroom, which Logan uses for most of his stuff – thereby segregating his food from ours, as a general rule. Apart from a small handful of things, like eggs, his stuff is in the sunroom, and ours are in the kitchen, and never the twain do meet.

You can probably already see where this is going, but I’ll proceed with the story, and you can judge for yourself if you’ve divined the outcome correctly.

I’m not sure what got me to looking in there, but this morning found me poking around in the sunroom refrigerator, and I saw this:

However, when I took a sip out of that juice glass, I discovered that the stuff had fermented.

It probably shouldn’t have come in as any great surprise; I’m not sure when the last time we were at Big Ange’s was. It had to have been at least a month, and probably two, in fact. So the fact that this stuff had ‘gone bad’ should’ve been expected – but it wasn’t.

I’ll admit that it wasn’t quite as good as the carton of apple cider that was forgotten in the back of my dorm room fridge back in the day – the effect of which I’ve tried to replicate several times since, to no avail (you might remember my attempts to get unpasteurized cider at the farmers’ markets from time to time for just such a failed experiment). But after I’d downed half the glass, and cut it with straight orange juice like I’d originally intended, it actually tasted like a passable (if clearly accidental) mimosa.

Logan came downstairs to find me giggling about this discovery, and once I explained what had happened to him, he was amused by it as well. He suggested that I invite the girls over to share in this new discovery, to which I responded that wouldn’t be possible. Not only were both Kerstin (due to her job assignment) and Ellen (visiting her mom, as she does at least once a month – you recall the drill) down in Macomb for the weekend, but the one girl who’s still up here – Erin – reacts to alcohol much the way you do to coffee. There’s no way I’d be able to get her to try the stuff.

Besides, while there was enough to overfill a 12-ounce glass, there really wasn’t that much more in the jug than that; I managed to polish it off along with my morning bowl of cereal. So, no one but me was going to have any of this fermented orange-lemonade; which is probably just as well, since I can’t imagine any of our group really enjoying it (it was a little strongly flavored even for me, to be honest). You probably would have had some, just on principle, since you wouldn’t have wanted it to go to waste, but I doubt you would have really liked it, either. Although, if you were still here, you would probably have made sure to drink it a long time ago, and it wouldn’t have gotten to this state in the first place, now, wouldn’t you?

Anyway, I suppose that’s one way to start the day; now to get on with the rest of it. In the meantime, keep an eye on me, and wish me luck; I’m going to need it.