Juicy Juice

Never in my life would I have imagined that buying a juice container could be one of the most difficult tasks to successfully complete. My husband and I are avid coffee and soda water drinkers and we recently veered off that path to explore the wonderful world of juice and iced tea. In order to create and house the liquid refreshements, we needed our very own fully functioning pitcher. One that both dispenses juice in a timely fashion and doesn't fall apart at the seams. Sounds simple right? Wrong.

Our first attempt at owning our very own pitcher started with our wedding registry. We found a nice recycled green glass vessel that suited us both and we added it to our list. Someone was kind enough to fulfill our wish and gifted us with this aforementioned pitcher. We liked it, roomy, unique, it seemed as though it would have no difficulty living up to the simple expectation of holding liquid.

After a few uses, I noticed that there was the beginnings of a crack near the base of the handle. I began to have all these horrible images of me picking up the pitcher only to have the body of it snap off and smash to the floor spilling Pomegranate/Blueberry Passion Juice all over while at the same time cutting up my hands, fingers and feet. I immediately emptied the pitcher and headed off to Crate and Barrel for a prompt return.

As I approached the woman at the counter and explained my situation she replied. "That's odd. Did you happen to put any hot liquid in there?".

I turned a deep shade of red and perhaps too quickly answered, "Nope, not at all".

I was now completely embarrassed, was this MY FAULT? For I often did indeed put hot liquid in there to make iced tea. Had I caused the downfall of the pretty green pitcher?

"I'm pretty sure this one here is just faulty. Do you mind if I exchange it?" I politely asked.

I was eventually cleared to take home a new pitcher to replace the old one and I was damn sure this one would last. How could I have been so stupid and careless I thought to myself. This was my fault. From now on, only cold and room temperature refreshments would be poured into our pitcher.

As time passed and a few uses were had from our container, I noticed the same thing. A small little crack along the base of the handle.

"Oh no!" I thought. It IS the pitchers fault! It is too fat and heavy to hold. This was a full on Sir Mix A Lot container. Now I knew I had done nothing wrong. Once again, I packed up and headed off to Crate and Barrel. Thank God there was a new lady at the counter. A lady who asked no questions, but rather agreed with me that this vessel was INDEED faulty and should NOT be cracking under any circumstances.

At this point I gave up on the recycled green glass pitcher and instead exchanged it for a fancy splatter screen, which by the way, has been quite a nice addition to our kitchen accessories. I began to set my sights higher, perhaps we didn't need a pitcher, what we needed was a dispenser. I could see it already, a gleaming, shiny refreshment dispenser with a really cool spigot that we could use for sangria, lemonade, tea you name it and it would deliver.

By this time, Christmas season had rolled around so I found a nice juice dispenser complete with a shiny spigot and added it to my wish list. Santa granted and on Christmas, Keith and I were the proud parents of our very own liquid party device. We were stoked! After grocery shopping we put the thing to use and made some bad ass raspberry lemonade, mixing it up just right, placing the lid back on and placing it in the fridge. Later on in the day when I went to get a glass of juice, I turned the spigot and, nothing. Perplexed, I turned it more and more until I couldn't turn it again and still, nothing. The effing spigot didn't work at all!! It was some sick joke. Not even a drop of delicious flavored lemonade would come out.

"What the hell?" I shouted. "Keith!! What kind of bullshit is this!? Our spigot doesn't even work. Now we can't get the juice out! It's stuck."

"Let me see." Replied Keith, he tried everything and this thing was absolutely 100% useless. After fully accepting the fate of both our juice and new dispenser, we removed it from the fridge, cleaned it and retired it to a bottom shelf in the kitchen cupboard. At this point, I had enough of hunting for the perfect pitcher, I resigned myself to plastic bottles and cans. Until...

Two months later and eleven months after our wedding, we received a belated gift. It was one that we already happened to have so, once again, off to Crate and Barrel for yet another return. This time I had done some pre shopping research and found what Keith and I believed to be perhaps the perfect pitcher. It was a glass and plastic combo, had a turn lid, compact body for shelf storage complete with an easy grip side so I no longer had to worry about that glass handle snapping off and the added "Meggie likey" bonus of a retro design. Could it be? Was it even possible?...Wish us luck, who knew juice could be so difficult.