The juice bar was a bright, friendly place, full of natural light. They sat at a small table near the door. The menu changed often depending on what was ready in the greenhouse for harvest, but they always had a good selection.
Molly chose a carrot and beetroot juice from the electronic menu and tapped in her order for the shop: six caigua, a small packet of macambo and some crusty bread rolls. Jonathan ordered what he called green slime but that the menu showed as “Greens of the Day”. You never knew what would be in it until it arrived. They read through some online publications and talked while they waited.
The young waitress brought over their drinks. Only minutes before, the vegetables had been growing. They’d been pulled from the ground, shuttled through to the kitchen, washed, juiced and delivered. She also brought over the groceries Molly had ordered from the shop.
“Hello Molly, hello Jonathan. How are you both?” The waitress, Jeni, bent to give them both a kiss on the cheek.
“Jeni, hi! What’s in the slime today?” Jonathan said, laughing.
“Today we have lots of spinach and celery and, of course, spirulina. It’s Popeye day today,” she beamed and made the strong-arm imitation of the recently revived cartoon.
“We grow our own spirulina now. It’s a huge success!” She loved working in the juice bar and was involved in the gardens, and the new ideas for improvements. She was part of the collective that had started the whole thing five years ago.
While she chatted, she carefully packed the groceries in Molly’s Carry-Glide. “There you go Molly. What are you cooking?”
“Thanks Jeni. Stuffed caigua, but you know me, I never follow the recipe. How are the new purple carrots going?”
“Ready next week, we hope. Interesting strain of purple daucus carota. The leaves are especially delicious. You know the origins of our cultivated carrots are rooted in the purple carrot. Rooted in. Hee hee hee,” she laughed at her own pun. “All we’ve done is let our orange friends lapse a few generations and they’ve reverted back to their ancestral types. Wonderful, hey? They are so sweet. They’ll be a big hit, Molly. We had a bit of a setback when the main greenhouse was broken into and the control panel and front wall were smashed. Who would have done that? Anyway, we’ve repaired it more or less. Drop by next week for the launch of the purple carrot!” She scooted off to deliver the next order.
The taste of the super-fresh juices was out of this world.