The Juice Man

One of the first visitors we encountered when we moved into our house was "The Juice Man." He actually has a name, João, but we all just call him the juice man. He has the cutest little truck that he drives around town selling fresh made juice out of. He grows most of the fruit himself, and has a machine to make fresh 100% juice (which is hard to come by here, as most "juices" available at the store are loaded with added sugar.) Normally he makes orange juice and puts it in recycled 2-liter coke bottles and sells it for R$9-10, depending on how good of a negotiator you are. (Just for the record, I pay R$9.) That equates to about $5US, which seems kind of steep, but most food here is very expensive. He doesn't really sell door to door, but drives around to his regular customers. I am not sure who sent him our way, but I've sent him to another American family that heard the stories and wanted to try. I am grateful to whoever it was that tipped him off to us.

I'm not much of a juice person, really. I prefer to eat the fruit and drink a glass of water, but when it is this fresh, this good, it is hard to resist. My kids still consider juice a treat, and it's an easy one to oblige.

The juice man also often sells oranges, a bag of 12 for R$3 (around $1.70US). Recently he also started with grape juice, which he insists needs a little sugar, despite the fact that I keep trying to convince him to make a batch without just to sell to all the Americans. But Brazilians like things sweet...very sweet, so he cannot imagine unsweetened grape juice.

We haven't seen the juice man in a while, I was afraid he was on vacation or out of fruit. But today he came with grape juice and melons. We love melons! We can easily eat a melon a day. I don't know for sure what kind this is, but I've never met a melon I didn't like.