Are you thirsty yet?

Wow,  July is almost over!  I guess it doesn't really feel like our normal summer because we've not had 100+ temps for 50 some odd days in a row.  It's been so weird with these cool fronts that we end up having severe thunderstorms just like during Tornado season normally has.  It was 70 when I went out on the deck this morning.  Unheard of for us! 

With summer comes the drinking season.  Not that kind of drinking that kind of drinking has no season!  I'm talking about what you'd call Soda.

That is if you live in any other part of the US other than Texas.  In Texas you may be asked the simple question "you want a Coke?" to which you might say "sure!"  Then we'd say "what kind?"  It's a loaded question...  Yeah we could be talking about Diet Coke, Coke Zero, or any of those Coke varieties.  But more likely we're asking if you want ANY kind of bubbly beverage in the soda range!  Dr. Pepper, Sprite, Root Beer, Pepsi although who drinks that? Gahhhh!   So when in Texas, beat us to it and designate your choice, or see if you are being hosted by a REAL Texan and go for the questions.

Over 20 years ago I gave up drinking Cokes I actually drank ONLY Coke, nothing else, for medical reasons.  They were hurting me internally.  It didn't help that I drank them like water all day long.  That didn't mean I quit craving that bubbly stuff in the summer.

So I got my stuff together and grew myself some Ginger Bug, easy enough.  Just fresh ginger, De-clorinated water and brown sugar.

With my ginger bug I made these bottles of SODA!  The darker ones are grape and the orange is orange/pineapple.  Since the grape was store bought, organic, all natural, no sugar added, it didn't fizz too well.  But the flavor was really yummy, grapey and gingery and just a tiny bit fizzy.  You can't guzzle it like a Grape NeHi Soda, but it was pretty good, the ginger gives it a bite.  The ginger bug makes it's carbonation from the sugar it 'feeds' on.  It's alive!  Like a bug!  So it NEEDS sugar, and no sugar added doesn't work well.  (So I added about a tablespoon of raw sugar to each bottle.)  Once it's fizzy there isn't much sugar left.

Now the orange/pineapple pop, that's a different story.  I juiced 3 oranges and 1/2 a pineapple in my lovely Omega juicer.  This made a huge difference. No sugar needed!  Can you see the difference in the bubbles in the bottles?

Let me tell you, when I popped the top of one of those bottles of the orange the fizz blew my bangs up off my forehead!  The flavor was great.  Dawn and I mixed it with rum the next weekend!  Isn't the purpose of making healthy drinks so that you can have healthy drinks?

I continued to make Ginger Bug Soda for a few weeks, the ginger just kept getting higher and higher in the jar because you just keep adding ginger and sugar everyday.  Just pour the liquid off on the 5th day and add more de-clorinated water and start adding ginger and sugar daily.  Reminded me of that Amish Muffin stuff.  Pretty soon it would run us out of the house.  So I just put it in the fridge to rest a bit.  Meanwhile I ran across Water Kefir.   More on that in the next post.

 Now for a word from our sponsor:

Check out this garlic I grew!  It's almost as big as my foot!

 The second one was about as big as my hand!  Each clove is equal to two regular size cloves.  

I wonder if this has anything to do with the fact that I buried the pulp from my juicer in the flower bed?

Now back to our scheduled program:

I forgot to show you the cute outfit that Nita bought while she was here!

 Now she's as in love with my favorite store as I am.