November 2nd, 2006 / by Kevin
Minute Maid Blends: Orange Passion
OK I hope Dean Allen has been paying the electric bill because I am just writing this directly into the machine. From my fingertips to your eyes.
I am a person who eats breakfast with such frequency that it is often necessary to push other meals aside in order to make room for additional breakfasts. Pancakes and eggs are a ’round the clock affair at my place. There is nothing quite so pleasant as Morningstar Farms bacon in the broiler as the sun fades from view. Let’s say we ever decide to do another of our “sleepovers”: if you slept in really late you might not even be sure what time it was, based on the meal I put in front of you as you sat in your pajamas, hair all mussed, rubbing the sleepy seeds out of your eyes. I mean think about it. Anyways.
I think we can all agree that orange juice is pretty much the go-to bev for breakfast meals, at least when one KEEPS FORGETTING TO BUY THE FUCKING CELERY for the Bloody Marys. But the problem is that most orange juice completely sucks, unless you’re going to find a bunch of oranges and squeeze that shit fresh, which is too much clean-up for a busy fellow like me. And frankly I don’t have the forearm strength for that type of endeavor anyway. So I make do with the various cardboard-carton’d O.J.’s I pick up at the grocery, avoiding anything with pulp because it feels like eating fingernails, and I just get through it, because what else am I going to do? In a world where all the options suck, we learn to accept what we’re given and derive pleasure where we may, like a homeless man who writes very good poems.
And that’s where my little diatribe would end were it not for my recent discovery of Minute Maid Blends: Orange Passion. It’s the breakfast juice I always wanted. Gone, the stale sourness of supermarket orange juice, replaced by sweetly bewitching hints of passionfruit and guava. I am seriously so taken with this juice that I can often be found standing by the refrigerator, drinking it right from the carton. As though I literally had no time to procure a glass. I can’t remember the last time I felt like this. I’m giddy, re-energized, excited once again about life as it pertains to orange juice. I feel like a little kid again. Footy pajamas and Scooby’s All-Star Laff-A-Lympics and the Vanessa Williams issue of Penthouse. I had a really complicated childhood.
14 Comments
November 3rd, 2006 at 12:50 am
What about Tropicana? No carton can compare to fresh squeezed, but I find that skimming the concentrate really makes a difference. Isn’t Minute Maid from concentrate?
November 8th, 2006 at 4:05 pm
I don’t know about you, but once I tried Simply Orange, I knew I would never again accept the bitter, only partly satisfying carton style junk they push at most grocery stores and restaurants as orange juice. It is simply one of the finest liquids I’ve ingested. Mix 60/40 with La Croix and you’ve got magic!
November 8th, 2006 at 8:04 pm
huh, this flavor has been sold in hawai’i forever–under local brands. i wonder if it tastes the same. experimentation is in order.
January 17th, 2007 at 1:47 am
Try Naked Juice. That stuff is REAL orange juice. After drinking that juice, I have a hard time drinking anything else, especially Minute Maid and Tropicana.
March 8th, 2007 at 12:25 pm
But what’s happened to Orange Passion? I don’t know where you live, but it’s disappeared from all the supermarkets in southeastern CT.
March 8th, 2007 at 9:22 pm
I know it! We were busting through a carton a week of this liquid joy and now it’s gone. I wish I was dead.
March 20th, 2007 at 12:18 pm
It is now gone from the only grocery store that carried it around Hamilton, Ohio. I’m devistated. Has anyone ever written to the company? Why would they discontinue an item that brings joy to so many mornings!!
March 20th, 2007 at 4:01 pm
How horrifying and shameful must their secret be? To pull a successful new brand (it was always sold out, even before the disappearance, so often that at first I thought that I just kept missing the restock) off the shelves without even an official recall or anything. That stuff must have been laced with methamphetamines, is all I’m saying. Filled with poison.
That’s what I keep telling myself, over and over, as I rock back and forth.
March 28th, 2007 at 11:49 pm
I don’t know how I did not know about this blend until now… when it’s apparently unavailable. I’ll have to check around in my local stores just in case it’s a regional outage. It’s funny… I was just trying to find a recipe to blend my own version of POG. Which is a popular term used in Hawaii for Passion-Orange-Guava juice. Robyn is probably very familiar with it. It’s widely distributed throughout the islands. I grew up there and still consider it home. Minute Maid still has it displayed on their website and has it listed as being available in a frozen concentrate form as well. So I guess you might check the freezer section too if you simply can’t live without it=)
April 3rd, 2007 at 9:57 pm
Guy at local Jewel store in Chicago just told me today that it was discontinued. leaving me with about a dozen rain checks. Our family has been buying it two or three cartons a week for at least seven, eight years–kids liked taste much better than straight OJ. I also would spout the virtues of the blend to everyone I knew. Who knows what the hell I can find now.
May 20th, 2007 at 6:26 pm
Orange Passion is gone from the shelves of southeastern Wisconsin, so I feel your pain.
I contacted Coca-Cola, the parent company. They replied that it was only being produced as a frozen concentrate, and available only in certain areas. I gave them my zip code, and I hope it is available to me somehow, and soon.
Recipe would be welcome.
July 23rd, 2007 at 11:45 am
We love this juice! But can’t find it anywhere. We called Minute Maid and they said the only store in Michigan to carry it is down in Detroit. I don’t understand how they can discontinue to carry a juice that was always in hot demand at the stores. We haven’t found a replacement since!
August 14th, 2007 at 1:01 pm
I fully agree with you: Minute Maid Orange Passion is the way to go. What really sucks is that my local grocery stores do not carry them anymore … :(
(tip: do not move to Wisconsin!)
November 26th, 2007 at 6:15 pm
I would never touch Minute Maid its made for concentrate and they use Brazilian oranges. The worst part is they hide the fact they are made from frozen concentrate and make you think its the same as Florida Natural or Tropicana by use the term Premium.
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