Random Chaos

I love cooking things. I also love coming up with nice drinks to go with them. Often that’s a customized tea blend. Other times, it’s a homemade soda. Sometimes it’s a juice thing.

And sometimes it’s some unholy hybrid of the three.

And sometimes, it’s entirely undefinable.

I remember a good drink that began with seltzer fizzed-up three buzzes in my SodaStream unit. After having drunk half the liter as plain seltzer, made some lemon syrup using sugar and lemon juice, added a shot of tart Montmorency cherry juice, and then tossed that all in a tall glass. The combination was wonderfully sweet and tart, and the dark color belied the taste that I’d just made—because it tasted like pink lemonade.

A slightly less…successful attempt started with the same strength of seltzer, but with a bit of vanilla syrup instead—Torani, if I recall correctly. I’d forgotten that such a heavy syrup, being added to a seltzer’d bottle—even tilted properly—results n a vanilla geyser. Furthermore, even though the liquid was bubbly as hell, the flavor was flat. Missing that certain something or another. I still haven’t figured out how to get that one to work. A shame, considering vanilla’s my favorite flavor.