Asparagus Juice

Most juice comes from fruits, although we have seen some made from seeds, flowers, and herbs. But here's a vegetable that I never thought would be made into a drink: asparagus juice.

When I was a kid growing up I hated asparagus. We had it growing in our garden and my mom would make it steamed about once a week and force everyone to eat it. It wasn't until I started to like dipping it in horseradish that it became edible. While it's ok in limited portions these days, asparagus will not show up on my plate unless it's  a free side at a restaurant that I don't know about.

So, I don't know that they were thinking when they decided to squeeze the juice out of (what seems like) a very un-juicy vegetable to make asparagus juice. But it's China, the land of peanut juice and corn juice, not to mention Jew's ear juice, so what can I say?

The asparagus juice (芦笋汁 lu2 sun3 zhi1) came in a juicebox probably to deliberately obscure the sight of what I thought was going to be a nasty green liquid. It turned out completely unexpectedly that it's clear juice.

And actually it doesn't taste that bad!

It strangely reminds me of Capri Sun and honeysuckle juice, finished off with asparagus. It doesn't even have a bad aftertaste like normal asparagus does. It's kindof refreshing, but not really. The thing is, which I found out after reading the label, it's mostly sugar water, with only 10% real asparagus juice. If you drink it quickly, you can't even taste the asparagus at all.