I'm not sure who taught me the recipe, but it's simplicity itself. Start with a can of frozen limeade. Empty it into a blender. More or less fill the empty container with tequila, and add that as well. Triple sec next, but only half or a little less. Put the top on and spin it up to get it all mixed together. Take off the little cap on the cover, and start dropping in ice cubes. Allow each one to get crushed before you add the next. Keep going until the blender is filled. If you like, salt the rim of some glasses. And before you can say Jimmy Buffet, frozen margaritas for the gang.
It's highly adaptable depending on the situation. If you have the large size container of limeade, the proportions still work. If you have a smaller blender or want a smaller batch, halve everything. If it's too boozy cut back on the tequila, too thick add a little water. The biggest challenge will not be the drinks, but keeping the chip basket filled and the salsa bowl topped off.
And as of just now, finding the limeade.
In February Coca-Cola, which owns the Minute Maid brand and its line of juices, announced it was going to stop making frozen juice concentrates in the US and Canada. In a statement directly to news outlets the company said "We are discontinuing our frozen products and exiting the frozen can category in response to shifting consumer preferences. With the juice category growing strongly, we're focusing on products that better match what our consumers want." The production lines stopped during the first quarter, and the expectation was that inventories would run out about, well, now. Having stopped at three different grocery stores looking for the stuff and coming up empty, I can vouch for that timeline.
It's been a good run, with its start during World War II. In 1945 the then Florida Foods Corporation entered into a contract with the U.S. government to supply 500,000 pounds of orange powder to soldiers serving overseas. However, the war ended before the powder could arrive, and so the company looked for another outlet. A year later, the now renamed Vacuum Foods Corporation had figured out how to turn that powder into a frozen concentrate and started shipping it to civilians. They changed their name again to Minute Maid, was acquired by Coke, and expanded into lemonade, fruit punch and the aforementioned limeade.
That original frozen orange juice became a staple in households all over the country. Whether your preferred breakfast was a stack of pancakes or a bowl of cereal, toast with butter or a bagel with cream cheese, there's an excellent chance it also included mom taking out a tube of Florida's finest, dumping it into a pitcher and adding a few containers of water. Likely you had a flirtation with Tang because the astronauts did, but eventually you came back to the real stuff. Yet consumers' tastes are ever shifting, and the push towards fresh squeezed juice, not the reconstituted version, meant that the little orange cylinders were less and less in demand. And so we have the current phase out of all flavors, with limeade, never the cash cow, being collateral damage.
To be sure, there are private label brands available at specific stores, such as Acme and Wegmans. But at least where we live those outlets require a diversion from our usual routes or a special trip. And with Coke, the 800-pound gorilla of the drinks market pulling the plug on their branded lines, there's a pretty good possibility that the overall market will contract. So even those alternatives may be on borrowed time.
Of course you can revert to the classic "1-2-3" recipe of one part sweet (triple sec, or if you're feeling flush, Cointreau or Grand Marnier), two parts sour (lime juice) and three parts strong (tequila). Add all plus ice to a tumbler, make like James Bond and shake, don't stir, and few will complain. But if want the frozen variety you'll need a blender, a lot of ice, and some tweaking to get it correctly slushy. Absent that DIY approach, should we decide the menu for our dinner party is fajitas, I guess I'll have to get in the car, make the drive, and hope the cans are with me.
-END-
Marc Wollin of Bedford finds that few turn down margaritas on a summer's day. His column appears weekly via email and online on Substack and Blogspot as well as Facebook, LinkedIn and X.
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