I Didn't Choose The Coke Life, the Coke Life Chose Me

Earlier this month, Coca-Cola rolled out a new product: Coke Life, a decent product with a kind of stupid name. They're calling it a "reduced calorie" cola. There's no high-fructose corn syrup in it, just real by-God cane sugar and a little touch of stevia extract. That dash of stevia lets Coke maintain the sweetness level of the beverage while allowing them to cut the amount of actual sugar in the drink - and there is absolutely no trace of an aftertaste!

Quite seriously, Coca-Cola Life tastes exactly the way Coke did when I was a kid, back before HFCS wormed it's way into every goddamn food product imaginable. If you go crazy trying to find sugar-based Mexican Coke or if you hoard Kosher-for-Passover Coke when you can find it in the spring, try a bottle of Life and see how well it fits the bill.

By the way, I bought a six-pack of these cute li'l 8-ounce bottles, and GUESS WHAT THEY'RE NOT TWIST-OFF YOU'RE GONNA NEED AN OPENER, SON.

My Rice Milk Adventure

James Cagney laughing it up with
Virginia Bruce and a glass
of milk in Winner Take All, 1932

Dairy products have always been my friend. Cheese...milk...butter...half-and-half in my coffee...whipped cream. I've had to give most of that stuff up since my bypass (I still eat cheese - I'm only human) but the only thing I really miss is milk. Whole milk. Before my surgery, milk was my beverage of choice with meals. Part of that, of course, is due to childhood habits, but there's some social conditioning going on there too. Milk is deeply ingrained in American culture; just pay attention when you're watching old movies. When you start noticing little details in films you'd be surprised how many scenes there are where people drink milk. When the hospital dietitian came around to discuss the "cardiac diet" I was henceforth expected to follow, I was told that rich dairy products were right out...but I could drink all the SKIM milk I wanted. Skim milk is good for me. Whole milk is poison.

To hell with that. I really can't stand the taste or mouthfeel of skim milk. It's nasty shit. I'd rather never drink milk again than drink skim milk. So I started looking for a substitute. I found that most brands of soy milk are pretty good. My favorite "grain milk," though is rice milk. Commercial rice milk is pretty amazing - Not only does it have a consistency very close to dairy, it also tastes like the milk that's left behind in the bowl after eating Rice Krispies (which is basically the best flavor that milk can be except for chocolate and malt.) Naturally, we've been going through a lot of Rice Dream, at like three bucks a container. It gets expensive fast, so I decided to try making my own because I am a cheap bastard thrifty. The ingredients in Rice Dream are pretty simple, too: filtered water, partially milled brown rice, veggie oil to provide a bit of body, and some added vitamins. How hard can this be, right?

It turns out that it's not that hard to find rice milk recipes on the web. In fact, there are so many that it can be kind of overwhelming. The first time I asked Chef Google for her recommendations, the top results called for using brown rice and a long initial cooking time. So that's what I did:

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Rice Milk (Cooked Rice #1)

1 cup brown rice
8 cups water
1/4 cup canola oil
dash of salt
additional water
sugar to taste

Combine the rice, water, oil, and salt in a heavy pot and bring to a boil. Turn down to a very low simmer, cover, and allow to cook for 3 hours or longer (a slow cooker or cockpot is excellent for this.) When the rice has cooked enough, it will look kind of like a soupy rice sludge.

Measure the sludge into a blender. For every cup of rice you put in, add 2 cups of fresh water (put in rice and water alternately so you don't overfill the blender.) Whirl the mixture on high for at least five minutes. (If you have a Vitamix or Ninja this will probably be enough; if you have a standard blender, you'll need to leave the blender on for somewhat longer.)

She likes green beans, though.

The rice milk will now be somewhat thinner than when it came from the pot, and it needs to be filtered. Use a very fine-mesh strainer - or a strainer lined with a piece or two of cheesecloth - to pour the rice milk through and into a big bowl. Scrape along the inside of the strainer every now and then to help the stuff flow through.

When done, you will have some thick rice milk (more like "rice heavy cream" in viscosity) in the bowl, and a strainer full of disgusting mushy rice bran. You can throw the bran out, or eat it if you want some fiber in your diet. If you have chickens, give it them. (I gave mine to my parrot. She didn't like it.)

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When you cook rice this long, it gets thick and gummy. Even after thinning it in the blender and removing a lot of solids with the filter, the rice milk - although a very lovely white color - was still too thick to comfortably drink. Starting with a measured 36 ounces of the thick stuff, I gradually added water, sampling as I went, until I arrived at a quaffable consistency. I wound up getting about 56 ounces of rice milk for every 36 ounces of thick liquid I measured into the blender. If you try this method, you'll need to experiment to find the right consistency for you. The heavily-cooked rice had developed a somewhat bitter aftertaste and I added a little sugar to round off the flavor. It wasn't all that bad, but it wasn't exactly good, either. No matter what I did, I couldn't get rid of the gumminess. I made something like four batches of this cooked-brown-rice rice milk because even though I wasn't that happy with the end result, I wanted to tinker with it AND I wanted to use up all of the brown rice. My final batch of cooked white rice milk was made with white rice. It was sill gummy, but there wasn't nearly the quantity of dregs in the strainer. I learned two lessons from this:

1. Cooking the rice into a paste is NOT a good way to start rice milk.
2. Screw brown rice. If all I'm doing is skimming off the bran anyway, why the hell am I spending more money on brown rice vs. white? 

Despite being kind of unhappy with the results, I couldn't call these first attempts at homemade rice milk a failure. The milk turned out exactly as the online recipes said it would, I just didn't care for the results.

Next, I tried using cooked rice left over from a meal. The rice was cooked, but not cooked until it's soul departed for the Elysian Rice Paddies.

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Rice Milk (Cooked Rice #2)

1 cup leftover cooked rice
4 cups water
Dash of salt
Sugar to taste

Combine rice, water, and salt in a blender and whirl until smooth. Add sugar to taste and blend a little bit longer. Pour through a fine strainer or a few layers of cheesecloth to remove any chunky bits. Serve chilled, shake well before serving.

If you use white rice, like I did, you'll find that there are a lot less solids that need to be filtered out, because there isn't any indigestible bran to remove from the milk.

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This turned out a little bit better, but still had that cooked-rice gumminess that I really didn't care for. Why was the Rice Dreams commercial rice milk so smooth and clean-tasting, while mine was gummy? I looked up more recipes and found that some people were making their rice milk from raw rice. Could this be the answer?

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Rice Milk (Raw Rice)

1 cup raw rice
8 cups water
Pinch of salt
Sugar to taste

Some recipes recommended toasting the rice as a first step, to help develop a better flavor. Put the dry rice into a skillet over medium heat and stir it frequently as the rice toasts and browns slightly. Remove from heat when fragrant and lightly browned.

I made batches with both toasted and untoasted rice. I couldn't tell the difference between the two.

Combine the rice and the water and allow to soak for 8 to 10 hours. I just put the stuff together in the blender before I left for work. When I got home that evening, the rice was soaked and already in the blender.

Whirl the soaked rice/water mix at high speed for 10 minutes to destroy the rice and incorporate as much of it as possible into the rice milk. Add salt and sugar to taste, sipping and adjusting as needed.

Pour through a cheesecloth-lined fine strainer, serve chilled. Rice milk will separate in the fridge; shake well before serving.

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The flavor of this version is pretty much what I was looking for...and yet, it still wasn't right. My Ninja blender, as efficient and deadly as it is, couldn't grind the rice fine enough for efficient processing. Worse yet, the milk had some fine particles still floating about - too fine for the cheesecloth to catch, but coarse enough to make it feel like I was drinking a glass of sand. I solved this problem by pouring the rice milk through a nut milk bag - an extremely fine-meshed nylon back that is used to filter...well, homemade nut milk.

Finally! I had a decent homemade rice milk. Now I wanted something faster.

That's when I decided to use rice flour instead of whole rice grains. I don't have a grain mill, and obviously my blender is not the right tool for grinding rice. After some trial and error, I have a recipe now that works beautifully, and is proportioned to the 46-ounce juice bottles that I use to store the milk:

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Dave's Rice Milk

46 ounces water
1 cup rice flour
1/2 tsp salt or salt substitue
1/4 cup canola oil
3 to 4 tbsp demerara sugar or regular sugar

Combine all ingredients in a blender and whirl on high speed for 8 to 10 minutes. Pour through a nut milk bag, carefully squeezing out all the liquid you can from the bag.

Shake well before serving; serve chilled.

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This turns out the most awesome homemade rice milk of all, much cheaper than buying the commercial stuff. Someday, I'm going to find a grain mill at an estate sale or thrift shop and I'll mill my own rice flour from whole rice and the milk will be even cheaper, but for now buying rice flour in bulk (or from the Bob's Red Mill section at Ocean State Job Lot) will have to do.

Real Apple Cider

I can not buy apple cider at the supermarket. Every major brand of apple cider, even the ones that are locally or regionally produced, are pasteurized now and pasteurized cider doesn't have the fresh apple snap that cider should have. It tastes like liquid applesauce, and cider should instead taste just like taking a bite out of a fresh-picked apple (minus the crunch.)

For years, I've taken a nearly weekly drive south to Portland CT, to Gotta's, a farm stand on Route 17, which still presses and bottles cider from their own apples. Fresh cider. Unpasteurized, complete with the state-mandated warning label that the cider is unprocessed and might be "bad" for me.

Last week the family and I drove north to Hadley MA and found apple cider from Pine Hill Orchards at one of the farm stands there. This cider is excellent - fresh and snappy and unpasteurized, just like cider should be - and it's also just as sterile as the pasteurized variety.  They do this by exposing the cider to UV radiation as it's bottled.

It would be so awesome if more processors could adopt the UV sterilization process. So many more ciders would taste fresh and snappy again, instead of cooked.

If you have the opportunity to try an unprocessed or UV treated cider, jump at it. You'll be amazed at the freshness of the taste, and you might never settle for pasteurized cider again.

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Fulton's Harvest Pumpkin Pie Cream Liqueur

Autumn is upon us, and you know what that means: a torrent of foods and beverages either tainted or enhanced with the flavor of pumpkin (depending upon your point of view.)

Personally, I find this whole "put pumpkin into everything in autumn" thing to be rather silly. In New England, pumpkins are goddamn everywhere, starting the day after Labor Day and going right through Christmas, thanks to the Pilgrims, who survived the horrible winter of 1621 by carving out a gigantic pumpkin the local Indians called "Squanto" and huddling inside, sheltered from blizzards and sustaining themselves on Squanto's seeds which they roasted over a smoldering fire built from corn cobs. Ever since then, pumpkins in New England have been symbolic of the harvest and Thanksgiving, and lately it seems that they're also symbolic of the clever ways marketers and flavor engineers use to separate us from our discretionary income.

This wouldn't be happening, by the way, if more people got off their asses and cooked a real, honest-to-god pumpkin pie, instead of settling for the flavorless shit precooked and frozen in the supermarket. Consumers aren't longing for the flavor of pumpkin, they're experiencing nostalgia for the flavorful pies that their Moms or Grandmas used to make, when they'd come home from school and find that the whole house smelled like spiced pumpkin because of that freshly-baked pie cooling on a wire rack in the kitchen. 

So anyway, where was I? Oh, yeah. Fulton's Harvest Pumpkin Pie Cream Liqueur. It's delicious, really, and tastes like pumpkin pie-infused Bailey's Irish Cream. Lynnafred adores the stuff and particularly likes it poured into Green Mountain Pumpkin Spice coffee; she's also working on a few cocktails using it as a featured ingredient.

I will say only that if you enjoy cream liqueurs and you like pumpkin flavored stuff, Fulton's Harvest is right up your alley.

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Review: Angry Orchard Crisp Apple Hard Cider

There has been a huge explosion in the number of hard ciders available in the past ten years. I remember when they were kind of hard to find. Now, I can find a couple brands in supermarkets, and huge numbers more in package stores.

I decided to try Angry Orchard cider because of their cool label (what else is new, right?) A gnarly, pissed-off looking apple tree glares from the label like some demonic Ent. But despite the name and the graphics, Angry Orchard is refreshing, smooth, and carries over a lot of apple character with it (with very little actual sweetness - this is not an alcopop.)

There are three varieties in Angry Orchard's line: Traditional Dry, Crisp Apple, and Apple Ginger. I decided to go with the Crisp Apple for this initial tasting, because I wanted Lynnafred to give it a try. She isn't a fan of hard cider the way I am and I thought the Crisp Apple would have more raw apple flavor remaining to entice her, rather than the more abstract applish flavor that characterizes most drier ciders.

And there is no denying that Crisp Apple has that fresh apple thing going for it. While it doesn't taste anything at all like supermarket apple juice or apple soda, there is a subtle hint of sweetness in the background with, well, crispy apple and yeasty flavors wrapping around it.  With its interesting combination of sweet start and tart, dry, beery finish, I thought Angry Orchard Crisp Apple to be a decent, middle-range hard cider.

PS - If you're wondering if Lynnafred liked it, that is a negative. She took a swig, wrinked her nose, and said, "I'm not a fan of hard cider."

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Beer Review: Wicked Pissa IPA

The other day, I bought a variety of beers and other alcoholic beverages. Each of them interested me at the time I bought them - some, because I had had other varieties of the same brand; others, because the product was in a category I enjoy; still others, because the labels were so cool and interesting that I wanted to find out what was locked up behind them.

And then there was this. Wicked Pissa IPA, which I bought solely because it was a novelty.

The label claims all of New England as its turf, but anyone really from New England knows differently. The only place the word "pissah" is used as a descriptive meaning "excellent" is Boston and its immediate vicinity, and there are few things the rest of New England likes less than Boston presuming to know what's good for all of us. Especially when "all of us" means "Massachusetts west of Worcester" (trust me, I grew up in Western Mass, and if there were a way we could form our own state and tell Boston to shove it, it would have been done forty years ago.) Also, notice that I spelled "pissah" with an "H" on the end,  because that's the way it's spelled. goddamnit.

In other words, everything on the label of this IPA points to someone having a shitload of contract-brewed beer to get rid of, so they slapped a misspelled label that sounded "New Englandy" on it and put it up for sale in the Northeast.

But it was still an IPA, and I like IPAs, so I figured the worst that could happen was I'd get to drink an IPA that had a stupid label on it.

Wicked Pissa pours out medium amber with a short-lived white head. The aroma is fairly complex - the usual IPA hoppiness, of course, but also something slightly green and floral. The flavor was dry and hoppy, with just a hint of that floral quality wafting around - a good, bold IPA taste. Unfortunately, there was also a profoundly skunked quality to it that I really didn't enjoy at all. I really can't give it more than about a 3 stars out of 5, and one of those stars is because they were able to induce enough curiosity in me to buy it in the first place.

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Beer Review: Atwater Brewery's Vanilla Java Porter

I'm usually not a big fan of dark beers - I love IPAs, pilsners, and lagers. But on a recent trip to Yankee Spirits in Sturbridge, one of the largest package stores in New England with a selection of literally thousands of beers, Lynnafred (who is a big fan of dark beer) spotted Atwater Brewery's Vanilla Java Porter and asked if I was up to a bit of a challenge. I have to admit that the idea of a beer brewed with vanilla and coffee sounded kind of appealing, so we bought a sixpack to try with some friends.

Vanilla is the dominant element of this brew, and it's evident from the second you crack the tube. It's got a strong nose of vanilla and caramel, with just a hint of coffee coming through. It pours out with good body, though a little thinner than most other porters. The thin head dissipates quickly with very little lacing.

The flavor closely echos the aroma: strong on the vanilla, less so with the coffee, and backnotes of caramel and chocolate. It's a little on the sweet side as well, with a pleasant malty toasty finish.

Lynnafred and I both enjoyed this brew, as did the people we shared it with, who commented about how smooth and creamy it was. Two people actually told me that good enough "to be a dessert."

Review: Canfield Diet Cherry Chocolate Fudge Soda

Okay, here we go again with another wicked short review:

Canfield's Diet Cherry Chocolate Fudge soda tastes exactly like a chocolate-covered cherry in soda-pop form. It's delicious. Seriously. And I don't think I can add anything else to that, so...The End.

Review: Polar Diet Cola

I enjoy soft drinks, but I don't enjoy the hundreds of empty calories in sugar-sweetened beverages. And because I also like the taste of cola, I'm always trying sugarless colas to find something I like.

Now, I want to be totally upfront with you all and say this right away: I hate Diet Coke. I know that it is probably the most popular diet cola on the market, and I accept that plenty of you out there have made it your diet soft drink of choice. But accepting that and understanding it are two very different things. To me, Diet Coke tastes thin, weak, and acidic - and nothing at all like a sugarless version of Coca-Cola.  I was so happy when Coke Zero came out, because it actually tastes like Coca-Cola. Coke Zero is what I think a "diet Coke" should be.

Anyway, because I won't drink sucky Diet Coke, my two favorite diet colas have been Polar Diet Cola and Coke Zero, in that order. Yes - I have always loved Polar Diet Colal, and even Zero could not knock it out of its first place standing. 

Imagine my horror, then, to find that apparently Polar has changed the formula for Polar Diet Cola!

In the past week, I've had twelve cans of Polar Diet Cola, and every single one of them has tasted like a copy of Diet Coke: thin, watery-weak, and acidic, with very little cola flavor. Hence this review.

If you are looking for a less-expensive alternative to Diet Coke, try a can of Polar Diet Cola. I think you'll be amazed by the flavor profile similarity.

If you hate Diet Coke and want something that tastes like cola...I think you might have to scratch Polar Diet Cola off your list. Too bad.

Review: Mug Cream Soda

Mug Root Beer is common around here, but until a recent trip to Maine, I had never seen Mug Cream Soda.  And after buying a couple of bottles to try out, I think I know why: It's not really that good.

There isn't much body to it, and little flavor other than a vaguely vanilla-like sugar sweetness with a light burnt-sugar finish. It's probably the blandest "cream soda" I've ever had. Totally not worth buying again.

Review: Jones Zilch Vanilla Bean Soda

Jones Zero Calorie Zilch sodas just started turning up in the stores around here. They've  been available for a couple of years now, but not many of my regular stores carry Jones to begin with, and the ones that do rarely have more than a couple of regular flavors, let alone Zilches.

But Lynnafred found some and brought a four-pack of Zilch Vanilla Bean soda home with her last week. She was excited because vanilla is one of her favorite flavors and she's always loved the high-quality Jones offerings. (Well, maybe not always. There was that vomitous Bacon flavor awhile ago.)  

Lynnafred really liked it. She said that the flavor was "subtle" and that there was minimal aftertaste from the Splenda.

I enjoyed it - I like vanilla, and there are few true vanilla sodas on the market - but not quite as much as she did. For me, the subtlety of the flavor bordered on bland and the artificial sweetener used (sucralose, also sold under the brand name Splenda) left a bit of a chemical aftertaste.

Would I buy it again? Probably. i'm going to be keeping an eye on the market for the other Jones Zilch varieties such as Pomegranate or Black Cherry.

Gevalia Coffee

For years, Gevalia Coffee has only been sold in the US via mail order. Old farts like me will probably remember their magazine ads back in the pre-internet days, but Gevalia also used direct mail and television ads before shifting gears to sell online.

And now, Gevalia (which has been a wholly-owned subsidiary of Kraft since the early 70's) can be found in your local supermarket.

This is new turf for Gevalia, and they're working hard to get the word out. Earlier this week, Kraft sent us a sample of Gevalia for review - a 12-ounce bag of Traditional Roast. We couldn't wait to try it out, because Maryanne and I are both big coffee drinkers, and we enjoy it every step of the way - from the sound and smell of opening a new package, to the fragrant anticipation of the percolator bubbling in the kitchen, to the rich coffee flavor and aroma of a freshly-poured steaming mug of ambrosial joe. And although we've had a wide variety of different brews from ordinary to exotic, neither of us had ever tried Gevalia before.

We were not disappointed.

The very first whiff when we opened the bag hinted at the caffeinated joys to follow. The aroma was smooth and nutty, with hints of earthiness and chocolate.  We loaded our favorite coffee maker - a vintage 12-cup Universal percolator dating from the mid-1950's - and fired it up. Delicious javaliness tickled our noses as the percolator sang it's brewsong, and when the percolator's red pilot light came on (indicating the coffee was ready!) we poured it forth.

Ahhh.  Awesome.

Gevalia totally delivers on it's promise of smooth, rich, perfect coffee.  The flavor was completely coffee, without any harsh acidity or unpleasant, excessive bitterness. Maryanne and I were impressed, and we're actually looking forward to picking up another bag at the grocery store.

Vernors Ginger Soda

So, Vernors. Yet another beverage with a cult following. Is it a ginger ale or a "ginger soda?" It's been marketed as both, but currently the can says "The Original Ginger Soda," so I guess we'll go with that.

And I think that's fair, because Vernors is sweeter and more gingery-spicy than the typical ginger ales that are commonly on the market, with a flavor profile that has a lot more going on than the usual sody pop.

Vernors has a stronger ginger flavor right out of the gate, and it's accompanied by a subtle spicy kick, reminiscent of but milder than ginger beer.  There's a touch of vanilla in there as well, and the overall effect is really quite nice.

I'm told that the Vernors of today is different than the classic Vernors of yesteryear - that the formula has changed and the soda is less itself than it once was. I'm not in any position to notice because Vernors is hard to find here in New England, and before scoring the few cans I recently tried, the last time I had it was back in the late 1970s and I don't remember that old experience all that well.

But anyway, Vernors is a unique taste and enjoyable. If you live outside of their home turf of Michigan, Ohio, and Illinois and find a can or two, nab it. You'll like it.

Rob's Really Good Beverages Are Really Just So-So

So, back in June I wrote a review of Rob's Really Good Chocolate, and found it not only Really Ordinary, but also really dickish for calling itself "life changing."  In the comments, a representative of Rob's offered to send me some of their beverages to review to see if they could make me stop thinking they're douchebags for claiming that their overpriced processed food products are "life changing."  I didn't take them up on that offer - I went out and bought a selection of Rob's Really Good drinks on my own.

My selection, from left to right:  Blueberry Iced Tea, Agave Mate, Iced Tea with Lemon, and something called, I shit you not, "Drink Your Salad."

Blueberry Iced Tea  wasn't bad.  The blueberry and black tea flavors were well balanced and it was adequately sweetened. There's no actual blueberries or juice in it, though, just something called "blueberry essence" and otherwise-unnamed "natural flavors." Overall it was no better or worse than other flavored teas we've had.

Agave Mate - Stripped of their starry-eyed marketing,  mate is just another crumbled dried leaf and agave syrup is nothing more than fructose syrup made from a cactus. So it should come as no surprise that if you don't buy into all the nonsense that's been written about the ingredients,  Rob's Really Good Agave Mate tastes like Really Nothing Special Sweet Tea. 

Iced Tea with Lemon was, well, iced tea with lemon. Like the other teas, there was nothing singular or exceptional about it - if you've had Arizona or Peace Tea or home-brewed iced tea, you already know what to expect.

Okay, now it's time for the star of the show, Drink Your Salad, which is labeled as "Celery, Pear & Spinach Light Salad Drink." It sounds almost horrifying, and indeed Lynnafred took one look at it and said, "Dad, this one is right up your alley and I don't want anything to do with it."  All the way home from the store, we speculated on what it might taste like.  Celery was listed first - would it taste like an uncarbonated version of Cel-Ray soda?  Or would it be more spinachy?  Or maybe it would be like pear juice but with a strange vegetable backnote?  We opened it and took nervous, tentative sips, and found that it was a perfectly ordinary, somewhat bland, pear-flavored sugarwater that was completely lacking in any kind of vegetative character at all.

Note the added citric acid,
without which there would be
approximately 0% dv Vitamin C

And no wonder.  The primary ingredients are purified water and cane sugar.  The juices in the drink - pear juice concentrate, sweet potato juice concentrate, spinach juice concentrate, celery juice concentrate, and carrot juice concentrate - comprise less than 2% of the total blend (or about 1½ teaspoons worth per 14 ounce bottle) and are further overwhelmed by the natural pear flavor added.  Seriously:  Less than 2% veggie juices, it tastes like nothing but cheapass pear Kool-Aid, and Rob's Really Good calls it a Light Salad Drink?  That is some heavyweight marketing bullshit right there.

Just like the chocolate, these beverages are labeled "Life Changing," While I'm sure Rob's life has been changed by his company's success, the hubris and entitlement of bottling mediocrity and then elevating it to the level of, say, losing your virginity or holding your grandmother's hand through her last breath (both of which are actually life changing) still makes him a douchebag.

Cascal Light Red Fermented Natural Soda

Chances are you've heard about Cascal Fermented Soda kind of recently, what with Bizarre Foods host Andrew Zimmern helping to promote them and all.  I'd heard of it, but not tried it yet. Cascal is a Whole Foods kind of company, and I'm really not a Whole Foods kinda guy.

So when I found Cascal at my local downmarket Big Lots, I grabbed a four-pack so I could check out what all the buzz is about.  Although Cascal has a variety of pretentiously-named flavors (the names are designed to be evocative of wine, so there's an apple flavor called "Fine Dry," a honey and malt flavor called "Fine Dark," a cherry/chocolate/rose flavor named "Ripe Rouge," and so on) only the "Light Red" was on the shelf.  On the front label, Light Red claims "notes of Black Currant and Mirabelle."

Most of the time, when you think of "fermentation," you think of alcohol (or spoilage, right?) Cascal's fermentation develops flavor, but the drink is non-alcoholic. It's kind of a wine-ish flavored sody-pop.

But it's obvious with the very first sip that this is no ordinary sody-pop.  There is no sugary sweetness, only a dry and crisp flavor of red summer fruit with a slightly tart aftertaste. The carbonation gives Cascal a bit of fizz, but it's light compared with Coke and Pepsi's belch engines.  Maryanne and I both found it to be snappy and refreshing - much more so than heavier sugary pops.

The back label tells the story. Cascal is 19% juice, and the ingredient panel lists no preservatives, no added sugar, no added acids - nothing but sparkling water, fermented barley malt, and a variety of different fruit juices (almost all of them from concentrate, and most of them fermented.) The final result is sparkly, fruity and quenching, and only 60 calories for the bottle (compare that to 140 calories for the same amount of Coca-Cola.)

Cascal Light Red is pretty good stuff. I might even try some of the other flavors.

It's National Milkshake Day!

You know what that means, right?

Well, it might mean something entirely different for you. For me, and Holyoke Community College, that means that today is Free Smoothie/Milkshake Day, sponsored by our Student Activities office and the folks at f'real Milkshakes and their rolling Milkshake Wagon. (Note: I have no idea if it's really called the Milkshake Wagon. It just sounded good.)

If you had been in line with me, you would have heard
students of all ages grumbling about wanting
that damn smoothie "NOW, DAMMIT."

f'real milkshakes started showing up this semester in HCC's cafeteria at a whopping $3.79 a pop, but you can find them using f'real's store finder and they'll cost somewhere in the neighborhood of $2.50.

So, are these milkshakes any good? In a word, yes. Creamy, smooth, and made with a thickness that you get to choose, these shakes start with ice cream in a cup and are blended to the way you want them. (More or less, of course. There's three settings to choose from: less thick, regular, and more thick. Less thick is a little runny, regular is like a standard milkshake, and more thick is more like the still-mostly-ice-cream 'shakes you get at McDonalds.)

Their smoothies are even better. Creamy, fruity, and subtly sweet, the smoothies are my favorite of the bunch. Made the same way as the shakes are, plug them into the machine, select your thickness, and away you go.

The smoothies and shakes are made with a standalone, ready-to-use blender that operates with a fully integrated LCD touchscreen. Its sensors know when you've placed a milkshake cup in it, and bring up the prompt for thickness. Select what you're craving, and that's it. Sometimes the screen plays an animation, sometimes it does something else like give company history or little trivia bits. Either way, in about 45 seconds, the machine is done and so is your shake. And the blender is self-cleaning after every blend, so you never have to worry about cross-shake contamination.

But seriously, with ten regular flavors from milkshakes to smoothies to frozen cappuccinos, and two limited edition flavors (Reese's peanut butter cup and mint chocolate) you really can't go wrong. You'll have a tasty smoothie or shake every time.

So go out there and celebrate National Milkshake Day. Go get a f'real shake and go make yourself happy.

Links:
f'real Main Website - the epicenter of delicious frozen drinks

Disclaimer: This is NOT a sponsored post. I'm not being paid by f'real Milkshakes for advertisement, or by Holyoke Community College. I just freaking LOVE milkshakes.

Mexican Coca-Cola

Look what I found in my local ShopRite store today:  Mexican Coca-Cola! This is very cool - previously, the only place around here where Mexican Coke is sold was Costco (cheaper than ShopRite, I will admit, but at Costco one can only buy the stuff by the case whereas at a grocery store you can buy singles.)

Anyway, there are a ton of people like me who remember what Coca-Cola is supposed to taste like, and the corn-syrup-sweetened swill they peddle to Americans these days ain't it.  Prior to the mid-1980's, The Real Thing was made with sugar.  Nowadays, the only way to get Coke with sugar is to wait until Passover and stock up on the specially made Kosher for Passover variety, or to buy Coca-Cola imported from Mexico.

But it isn't just the taste that's nostalgic about MexiCoke. The real glass bottles retain the classic Coke shape and pale-green tint, and they have to be cracked with an opener - there are no twist-tops on these babies.

If there's a store near you selling Mexican Coke, pick up a bottle and do your own taste test.  See if you can tell the difference between the two, and see which one you prefer.

Brew Review: Boddingtons Pub Ale

I'm not really all that much of a beer drinker, and when I do it's usually a lager, pilsner, or IPA. But my brother-in-law Nick had been gifted with a case of Boddintons Pub Ale recently, and I couldn't resist giving it a try.

Boddington's is imported to the US in nitro-cans, the same type of container that allows Guinness to pour successfully even when not drawn from a proper tap.  And let me tell you, it is a gorgeous pour - the same tumbling cascade of rich creamy foam, perhaps a bit less dramatic than a Guinness pour because the head roils and builds against a honey-golden backdrop instead of the deep chocolate color of Guinness.  After a moment or two, the head settles to a thick top layer about an inch or so thick, ready to sip through.

The ale itself is surprisingly mild, and almost bland. Malty sweetness hides behind a strong cereal flavor tinged with a touch of grassy hops, and when the initial nitro-charged creaminess fades after the pour, Boddingtons winds up a little on the thin side.  But for all that, it was still a decent and refreshing brew and went quite well with the marinated London broil and barbecued chicken which Nick was serving from the grill.

McDonald's McCafe Mango-Pineapple Smoothie

McDonald's just introduced their latest McCafe offering: a mango-pineapple smoothie, and it's delicious.

It's got a nearly perfect balance of mango and pineapple; both of the flavors are fresh-tasting and distinct in the blend, without either of them overpowering the other. And like the other smoothies in the McCafe lineup, this one is icy, refreshing, and satisfying. It's yet another indication that McDonald's lineup continues to evolve as they go after the beverage market in fast food land.

Rainforest Cola

The beverage aisle in Ocean State Job Lot is often an occasion for adventure. Although some items are always available (San Pellegrino sparkling water and Polar soft drinks, for example) other stock rotates in and out according, I guess, to whatever kind of odd lot deals they come across.

And that's how I found Rainforest Cola in slender and unique 12 ounce cans.  The ingredients looked interesting, and includes:

• A small amount of sugar, with the rest of the sweetness provided by stevia leaf extract
• Acai juice
• Ginseng
• Guarana
• Green tea extract
• Kola nut extract

Rainforest Cola has quite an interesting taste profile.  The first sip is pure cola flavor with a hint of tartness, which Lynnafred compared to Haribo Gummi Cola Bottles. But other flavors soon come out as well, such as a hint of cinnamon and a strong dried stone fruit flavor. I'm not really sure where that comes from - it could be a acai juice, or it could be under the non-specific "natural flavors" on the label.

I've found it to be a pretty decent summer morning drink; although iced coffee is still my favorite, there is plenty of caffeine in Rainforest Cola to open my eyes as I sit at my desk at work. And even though I do like it quite a bit, I have to say that I think the company might be going a little heavy on the stevia because I'm getting that "non-sugar sweetener aftertaste" at the end. I use stevia in my coffee and occasionally on my cereal, and even though stevia is completely natural, I still get that aftertaste if there's too much of it.  Still and all, I would buy it again...if it becomes widely available by me.

Rainforest Cola is a product of Rainforest Beverages, a company that started up in 2009 to make 100% natural antioxidant soft drinks. As of right now, the cola seems to be their sole product, and it has kind of limited distribution (you can check out the locations selling it by clicking here.)