Mix 'n Match.Sometimes Unmatch.

I've discovered a recent pastime of mine- trying out all possible combinations, when it comes to fruit juices, more popularly referred to as mocktails. But these are not the regular combos that you can find right away in the menu or on the card outside the juice stall or anything. These are too ingenious to be confined in them.

Some of them sound normal and taste normal while some sound normal but taste really weird (read sad). There is this another class of combos, which sound weird but taste good and there is this last class, where it sounds and tastes weird as well.

One of my favourites is a combination of orange and carrot juice, with the proportion of orange being higher. The citric orange with a great flavour gets better with the slight bitterness of the carrot juice. Ideal ratio- 1.5:1 ratio of orange to carrot tastes heavenly. Another kick-ass weird combo is mango and musk melon. Strange as it may sound, it actually tastes really good. Call it the speciality of the king of fruits or the simplicity of the melon family, when they are brought together, they give out a simply rich flavour and taste. The mango juice, being smooth and pulpy mixes well with the coarse and thick musk melon and the result is a great pulpy, grainy mocktail. Drink it extra cold and you'll know what I'm talking about. Ideal ratio- mango to musk melon 2:1.

Surprisingly, a melon-melon combination actually tastes unpalatable. When I made my friends taste a water melon-musk melon combo, they thankfully refrained themselves from spitting on me for the sake of decency in public. Even if they had, they would have been justified in doing so. One more combination which was a little short of a disaster was water melon-chikku-sweet lime. None of us knew whether we should spit out the juice first and then throw up or vice versa. The faint pungent flavour exclusive to chikku created havoc when it mixed(rather, tried mixing) with the uncomplicated melon and sweet lime. This, I might confess, was pathetic. But there is one combination that me and my friends tried back in college and till date (fortunately), I haven't tasted anything worse in my life. It was a sickly mixture of vanilla milkshake, black currant ice-cream, orange fizz and tomato ketchup. What on earth made us do that? Well, if we had been rational enough to think about it, we would never have done it in the first place!

But an honestly great combination that I've hit upon in my experiments is that of mango-black jamun (naval pazham, as we call it in tamil). A truly brilliant pairing with the jamun lending a sharp and tangy flavour to the magical mango and the taste hits you right away leaving your taste buds asking for more. This one mixes and matches. Ideal ratio- mango to black jamun 2:1. Whip it up with a little vanilla ice-cream and you could be screaming for more.

But the best part is, I've observed one commonality whenever I order any of these. A strange, really strange, look from the guy serving (rather cautiously) the juice to me. And his look would always suggest two things- either he is going to barf or he thinks I will. Neither of it has happened yet. So I think my experiments aren't all that bad ;)

P.S: Do all this mix 'n match with some style, however gross the combination might turn out to be. That way, you would still end up looking cool even after a soul-sucking disaster.

P.P.S: Do not get back to me asking for suggestions for cocktail. I'm a nice girl from decent family.

P.P.P.S: One fine day, if you end up trying out any of the above combinations in any high-brow juice shop or anywhere, you know whom to think/thank!