::A Geek in Korea::

My wife’s family periodically gives us packets of strange liquids. These "juices" are not normal things that you would give people for their delicious flavors. These are juices in the name of health! Thus I get to drink things that keep "my body warm in winter", or "to prevent a nonspecific illness". These general claims are backed up by herbalists and whoever else sells the stuff. Nearly all of it is a brown, thick, foul smelling fluid that smells like ash or some sort of chemical. I never smells like whatever fruit or vegetable from which it was alledgedly derived. We have dozens of packets of these juices in the refrigerator. I never drink them of my own will, so I never looked at them carefully. Now I wish I had.

I was sitting around in a writer’s block funk trying to come up for a post tonight. Nothing came to mind, so I was bugging my wife for some ideas. She went to the refrigerator and grabbed one of the pictured packets below. I wasn’t watching her too carefully, so I got a mug of brown oddly smelling liquid.  I’m not a fan of the peach juice, but if it’s cold enough, and I drink it fast enough it doesn’t bother me terribly. Not my favorite thing to drink, but I’ve had worse. Thinking it was the peach juice in the picture on the right, I took a sip.

"Odd," I thought to myself.

She giggled evilly and said I was now obligated to finish the cup. 

I pinched my nose and just drank the entire cup as fast as possible. Only then did the foul flavor of "liquid onion" make itself known. It was like a Capri Sun from Hell. Only then did she show me the packet that was clearly labeled "Onion Juice".

I had no idea anyone would make "onion juice" or package it for sale. It turns out it was a gift from my father in law. My wife brought the spare onion juice packets home after tasting them at her mother’s house. The idea that someone would volunteer to drink this, then bring it home with the intention of drinking it again astounds me. Supposed health benefits aside, there would be no one volunteering to drink this stuff.

Oddly enough, while I can’t stomach Korean health juices, my wife hates V-8 and the packaged Western variations of vegetable juices I drink. I’ll gladly leave her all the onion juice in the house while I drink my salty blood red mixture from now on.