Citrus Agua Fresca from Mexico

Mexican Dessert

CITRUS AGUA FRESCA

INGREDIENTS

2 1/2 cups water
1/2 cup lime juice
1 1/2 cups orange juice
1 1/2 cups pineapple juice
6 tablespoons confectionary sugar

PREPARATION

Use long wooden spoon to mix all ingredients in pitcher. Stir until sugar dissolves. This goes well served over ice.

TIDBITS

1) Doesn’t the list of ingredients look like a ski slope?

2) One of the most popular sports televison ever was “The Wide World of Sports.” The intro to the program shows an athlete performing a great feat to the “thrill of victory and an athlete failing to the words “the agony of defeat.

3) The victorious athlete changed quite a few times. However, the failing athlete was Vinko Bogataj. Vinko wiped out in spectacular fashion just moments after starting to ski down a steep slope. Vinko remained blissfully unaware that tens of millions of people had been watching his snow tumble every week for twenty years.

4) Success is overrated. We remember spectacular failures. We embrace them.

5) Eddie the Eagle represented Britain in the 1988 Winter Olympics. He would soar like an eagle with folded wings. Eddie’s ski jumps brought him last place in every event he entered. He might have set records for the short jumps if the Olympics had bothered track such a thing.

6) Naturally Eddie became a national hero. The world remembered his name for decades. The winners in the ski jump? Tee hee.

7) Who can name a movie about bobsled gold medals? No one. Well, practically no one. But millions have seen the movie about the Jamaican bobsled Olympians, “Cool Runnings.” They didn’t win a medal. They only achieved cinematic immortality.

8) As the song says, “We don’t need another hero.” We need another Citrus Agua Fresca.

– Paul De Lancey, The Comic Chef

My cookbook, Following Good Food Around the World, with its 180 wonderful recipes, my newest novel, Do Lutheran Hunks Eat Mushrooms, a hilarious apocalyptic thriller, and all my other books, are available on amazon.com.