Yummy... POG!

While on Molokai in July, I tried POG, which is a combination of passionfruit juice, orange juice, and guava nectar. It was really good! When our vacation continued on to Maui, I found POG in the juice section of the Safeway market in Lahaina and also at the Whalers General Store behind our condo in Kahana. I hoped to find POG at our local grocery stores, but no luck. It can be found at select stores in California, Oregon and Washington, but not nearby for me. After doing some research on the internet, I did find some POG here in Southern California at L&L Hawaiian BBQ. Hawaiian Sun makes it, marketed as Pass-O-Guava Nectar, in 12 ounce aluminum cans. It's good, but not quite like the Meadow Gold brand of POG I found on Maui. I noticed our local grocery store carried the ingredients, so today I picked up a half gallon of Welch's Passion Fruit juice, a half gallon of Kern's Guava Nectar, and Minute Maid No Pulp Orange Juice. After doing a little bit of kitchen chemistry this afternoon, I found the ratio of juices that to me tastes just like the original POG - 1 cup Passion, 2/3 cup Orange, 1 cup Guava - YUMMY!

A little history...POG was created in 1971 by Mary Soon, a food product consultant who worked for Haleakala Dairy on Maui. The game POGs was initiated by Blossom Galbiso, a teacher in Hawaii in 1991. She started using milkcaps in her classroom, sharing with her students an old game she used to play by flipping milkcaps to be the first one to get the cream off the bottom. Her students began flipping the milkcaps and the game was reborn. The milkcaps became known as POGs because of Charlie Nalepa, who was hired by Haleakala Dairy as a marketing and promotions manager. Although the drink POG was never sold in glass bottles with cardboard caps, there was still a demand for the cardboard discs, so Nalepa ordered milkcaps imprinted with the trademark POG to give away as a promotional item. Today, the original POG is bottled in Honolulu by Meadow Gold Dairies. It is reported that Hawaii residents drink up 1.3 MILLION gallons of POG every month!