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At first blush, juice may seem to be an odd topic for a blog post. However, when you have kids, juice and juice boxes are an important part of your life. And, here in Argentina, it is fraught with challenge.

We try to pump the kids full of water and milk in terms of general beverages. We also allow them a bit of juice, which we are finding most difficult as boxed juices are generally filled with high fructose corn syrup and/or soy.

Yes, you read correctly, soy. A lot of the juice boxes are fortified with soy, so the juice tastes…well, like soy, and it has a milky appearance.

Needless to say, the soy juice is not popular with the girls!

Luckily, there are alternatives. Fresh squeezed orange juice is very big here, and easily accessible in nearly every restaurant and cafe. The display of squeezing oranges is bigger than the display of peeling oranges at the grocery store. Licuados are also widely available at restaurants, which are milk, banana, and berry type smoothies. At home, we juice our own oranges and make our own licuados, but that doesn’t solve the box of juice at school dilemma.

And, on a “juice” non sequitur, the Castellano way to indicate that you would like your steak cooked rare (which will probably come back medium!) is “jugoso,” or “juicy!”