Play It As It Lays

I'm listening to Joni Mitchell...on vinyl.  Court and Spark.  One of my favorite albums of all time.  When I hear the opening chords of Court and Spark (and yes, that perfect fruitcake of a song is my favorite on the album) I want my life to look like something from The Long Goodbye:  I want to drive a Mercedes coupe, have no tits, a heart-shaped ass, and a great big blow job mouth like Carly Simon.  I want to wake up in Laurel Canyon with a strange, hairy man lying next to me while wondering how I got to this place from my nice midwestern upbringing.  I want to fulfill outsiders impressions of what a life in Los Angeles might entail circa 1976.  I want to be Erica Jong, Joan Didion, and Julie Christie all at once (the balls, the brains, and the beauty respectively).

As it is, I wake up a block away from Grauman's Chinese Theater, next to a man whom I know very well, and have no doubts about how I got here from Central Coast California - I've been driving on Highway 1 my whole life.

Perhaps, as a result of my years on the coast, I do manage to fulfill at least one LA stereotype:  I love to juice.  Yes, that's right, out here it can be used as a verb.  "Juice" as in make fresh fruit and vegetable juices.  

I have a new juicer and I've been relishing in a regular cornucopia of cocktails.  Fresh and frothy orange juice, tomato, carrot, parsley and fennel, pear and apple with a thumb of ginger root...I could go on.  I drink stuff that would make a nice man from Wisconsin roll his eyes at me and explain, "She's from California."  

Listen, I love a medium rare steak as much - arguably even more - than the next guy but at this time of year?  Sometimes a plate of food seems unnecessary.  Sometimes what I really want is something that feels like the spring cleaning I've been giving my home, my Volvo station wagon, and my rooftop garden.  Why not give my descending colon the same treatment?  Juice it!  And if I fulfill the stereotype of some flax seed obsessed, yoga practicing, juice drinking fruitcake trainer from California?

Well, guess what?  

I am.  

Below is my favorite juice.  I found it years ago with a bunch of other recipes.  It was listed as "Digestive Cocktail" but I've given it a more apt title.  It probably does help with digestion but, more importantly, it tastes fucking great.

Court and Spark

1/4 lemon (with peel)

1/2 grapefruit (peeled)

2 oranges

Find a decent juicer (I recommend the Belville Compact or the Belville Elite if you're nickname is Big Spender), throw the ingredients down the chute, and catch them in your favorite 10 oz tumbler.  If you're feeling like an extra kick feel free to juice a knuckle of ginger root or add flax seed oil to the finished product.  

Namaste.