As my mother kindly pointed out in more than one text message, I did not send out a newsletter last week. The simple answer is that on Sunday I was busy being hungover and watching the movie Heat, which is almost three hours long.
Is that a flimsy excuse? Does the iconic scene in Heat where Pacino and De Niro meet at the diner happen exactly halfway through the movie, a structurally perfect place for it to occur within the narrative? The answer to these questions is the same.
Whatever, we’re back and that’s what matters. What also matters is the fact that it’s super warm in New York right now and that means that it’s fully Bev Season. The latest trend in drinking is Not Drinking, but whether your bev has alcohol in it or not, I think we can all agree that nothing is better in a bev than fresh squeezed citrus.
Now here is the problem, what do you do if you don’t have a citrus squeezer? Let me get ahead of this and say that no one is allowed to berate me for not owning one. I am a baby and who spends all her money on 2 a.m. Ubers and renting various Missions Impossible on Amazon.
So here is the solution to not having a citrus squeezer. It is called the Oprah Method and it works. It is called the Oprah Method because in the year 2010 Oprah, for the nth time, redefined culture and societal norms by doing this:
Yes, friends, the Oprah Method involves biting into the back of a halved piece of citrus and letting the juice shoot out into whatever receptacle you have provided it. I was wary when I first saw this, and so was Gayle! It looks crazy! But hand to God it works like a charm. As you can see in this seven-minute long video of the two best friends making Moscow Mules at a campsite, Gayle attempts to do what any normal person would do and just squeezes it with her hands. A fool’s errand.
Do you hear the smug, singsongy tone Oprah uses when Gayle DARES to ask her if she can really get more juice by biting the lime instead of using her hands?
🎶Yes I can🎶
We should all aspire to that level of confidence and derision when people question us about our innovative practices.
My intern Sara showed me this video three weeks ago and I have barely thought about anything else since. I have tried the method myself. My roommate just did it while making some kind of cilantro lime dressing. Yes, we are gross dummies. But I have a suspicion that at least one of you is also a gross dummy who wants to maximize citrus potential this summer, and if I can help just one person… well then by god it will have been worth getting zest in my teeth.