Indulgence: Homemade Soda

"Simple syrup" and club soda. That's it! The combination amounts are a personal-taste thing. Fill the glass mostly with (cold!!) club soda then carefully pour in a bit of the syrup to taste.

Simple syrup is just a combination of liquid and sugar boiled together at least til the sugar is dissolved, sometimes longer to get a stickier syrup.

We used 1.5 cups of liquid to 1.5 cups of fair-trade, organic cane sugar (I think I'll use less sugar for some of the flavours next time, though some really needed the equal portions) and just boiled til dissolved. So far we've tried five different flavours:

1. Ginger: This is our hands-down favourite so far. We peeled a small bit (a couple inches) of "fresh" ginger, cut it into slices, tossed it into water, and boiled it up then let it simmer til it smelled very gingery. We poured 1.5 cups of the ginger liquid into another pot and added 1.5 cups of sugar, boiled til sugar was dissolved, then removed from heat and let cool.

2. More Lime than Lemon: Hands-down second favourite! We juiced some limes (I think there were 6) then calculated how much more liquid was needed to make 1.5 cups. We then did 2/3 of amount of lemon juice and 1/3 of amount of water. 1.5cups total liquid into a pot, 1.5 cups sugar, boiled til dissolved, removed from heat and let cool.

3. Strawberry: I had a pail of strawberries earlier in the season and decided to juice some of them without any sweetener. I just ran berries through my blender with a small amount of water then strained through a sieve and ended up with a dozen bottles of nice, clear jewelesque-coloured juice. For the soda, I boiled up 1.5 cups of the juice with 1.5 cups of sugar. As my niece said when she tasted it with the club soda, "it tastes sort of like drinking liquid jam."

4. Blueberry: I did the same with blueberries as I'd done with strawberries. I have a blueberry addiction. Strangely enough, I haven't tasted the blueberry soda yet.

5. Orange: We juiced oranges then added a small amount of water til we got 1.5 cups, added sugar, boiled, etc. In my books, this one was fairly disgusting as soda goes, but we decided we will make it again sometime using a different kind of orange rather than navel.

Once the syrups were made and cooled, we poured them into glass/crystal decanters we'd picked up at the thrift shop for $1 each.

FOR ANOTHER DAY: We're going to try different "spice" sodas next!