As I write this post, I am sucking on a plastic stick. It's all that remains of the apple juice popsicle that I made when I started to think about writing this post. Apple juice pops were one of my favorite childhood summer treats. Sometimes years go by when I forget about them, but then on days like today, I dig out my old popsicle molds, buy some apple juice and get to freezing.

When I eat my apple juice pops, I always suck all the juice out of them first. Then, I'm left with just a pop of ice only - that is sad. I eat the ice and then, like now, all that remains is the stick.

I've considered trying a more adult version of this treat, pineapple-chile piletas (featured on Coconut and Lime), but plain, old apple does the taste and nostalgic trick for me.

Apple juice has gained in popularity over the last few years. I know I have always enjoyed it. However, a lot more people turned to apple juice when orange juice prices began to go up dramatically. It seems that perhaps some other fruit juice (and that fruits growers) are about to be bumped up in the ranks, at least temporarily.

China, as in so many other areas, has become the worlds supplier of apples. Due to a late frost and bad weather there, and in Poland which is also a big apple producer, the apple crop is about 10% lower for 2007 than the previous year. This means that supply is low while demand is high. British supermarket giant Tesco has already admitted that it's seen purchase prices go up, but hasn't made any decisions on what the retail prices will do.

Personally, I love apple juice. I recently found out that it is also a good source of vitamin C. No wonder so many people turned to it from orange juice (which I also enjoy enthusiastically). Hopefully this will be a fluke year and the prices won't go up too much or for a prolonged period of time. I think, though, that I'm going to stock up while the prices are good.

[Via ColdMud.com]

There's an "America's Favorite Neighbor" joke in here somewhere but I can't think of one at the moment.

A 2 year-old was accidentally served a margarita in his drink instead of the apple juice his mother ordered. The kid kept pushing the drink away after taking a sip and his mom didn't understand why. She opened the sippy cup and found the alcohol. She wasn't going to make a fuss, but later at home the child got sick and vomited. The chain says the incident was an isolated mistake. The child is fine now.

The reason this happened? Not only was the apple juice and the Triple sec/tequila mixture kept on the same shelf, they were kept in identical plastic bottles. Yikes.

[via The Obsure Store and Reading Room]

The concept of "drinkable fruit" is one that I do not quite understand. I understand fruit juice, but Tropicana's new Fruitwise Drinkable Fruit beverages are just confusing. Tropicana makes good-quality products, so I don't doubt that these drinks taste good, but the marketing concept is weird.

The drinkable fruit line is neither a juice nor a smoothie, but somewhere in between. The products claim to deliver two full servings of fruit in their 8-ounce, 170-calorie containers, but the fruit inside isn't necessarily the flavor printed on the packaging. Take the Strawberry Kiwi flavor, for example. It lists it ingredients as "filtered water, apple puree concentrate, strawberry puree concentrate, white grape juice concentrate, apple juice concentrate, raspberry puree concentrate, kiwi juice concentrate and natural flavors." The ingredients are all natural and to increase the thickness it is not surprising that everything was from "concentrate" - but there are more flavors in the bottle than promised, and the kiwi flavor seems as though it was thrown in as an afterthought.

A serving of fruit juice is ordinarily 6-ounces and you could drink 12-ounces of fruit juice for the same number of calories contained n one of these drinks - so why bother with them? Have plain juice if you are looking to get more fruit into your diet or make a smoothie on your own instead of reaching for one of these.