The Perfect Cream Soda

I don't drink much soda.

Not Coke, not Pepsi, not 7-Up or Sprite or Root Beer or Ginger Ale. They are just too sugary and not refreshing to me. I stick to unsweetened iced tea and iced coffee instead. (I don't know what it says about me that I prefer bitter over sweet, but let's not go there, m'kay?)

There is only one kind of soda I crave every so often. The smooth sweet deliciousness of cream soda can make me break my soda fast.

I have tried many, many brands, and most are okay, unless they are too sticky-sweet or have a fake vanilla flavor.

The other day, though, I found The Perfect Cream Soda, the One, the Champ. Behold:


Waialua Vanilla Cream Soda from Hawaii. Mmmmmm....It has real, true vanilla flavor and the perfect amount of sweetness from real cane sugar (would you expect anything else from Hawaii?) and a bit of Hawaiian honey.

It is smooth and a nice sunny gold (the photo is a bit dark) and comes with a fetching Hula girl on the label. The carbonation gives it small, champagne-like bubbles, not big nose-ticklers.

I have tried a lot of cream sodas in my life and this one, as Hawaiians might say "No ka oi" - it is number one.

I found it at my local Rocket Fizz shop, a place that carries 400 kinds of soda. You can also order online direct from Waialua Soda Company.

Looking at their site, I see they also offer Lilikoi (passion fruit) soda. I may have to branch out in my soda-drinking adventures.

Desperation Sauce

Since I am on the West Coast and most of my co-workers are in the Eastern time zone, our calls inevitably end up being right in the middle of the day - usually during the lunch hour.

Thus, one needs something to stave off the hunger demons until lunch can be had. It's usually a Clif or LaraBar, but the other day, in a fit of creative fridge-purging, I brought a cold artichoke.

The only problem was that I forgot the mayo, and an artichoke without sauce is almost not worth eating, a pale green imitation of itself. I had thought I could skip down to the company cafeteria, but time ran short.

With the clock ticking toward the start of the call, I knew I had to think fast. Desperation set in.

I raided the condiment package stash we keep over by the coffee pot.

Mmmm...no mayo, but there was mustard from the sub shop...soy sauce from Chinese takeout...parmesan cheese and those little dried peppers from a pizza run.

A dash of fake maple syrup from the last time we had Frozen Waffle Tuesday, and I was good to go.

(What, you don't have Frozen Waffle Tuesday? A package of Eggos, some syrup, a toaster and suddenly EVERYONE is happy. Try it sometime.)

I mixed it up and voila! Black, salty, tangy, spicy, tasty sauce! Well-balanced. Even piquant. Whatever "piquant" means.

Not bad, if I do say so myself. In fact, if someone served it to me in a restaurant as "dipping sauce," I would have been very, very happy. I don't know if this says more about my terrible palate or about my amazing kitchen alchemy skills. Check it out.

Chestnut Flour - Strangle, Fart, or both?

I cleaned out the cabinets recently. This brought up some interesting questions:

Why do I buy so many packages of golden raisins when I obviously never actually eat golden raisins?

What does "Best by August 2006" mean, anyway? I mean, it may not be best anymore...but it's still good, right?

Are whole grains helping my health just by sitting there in little storage containers? Because I am sure not cooking and eating them.

I also found a package of chestnut flour that I had purchased at Corti Bros. on my trip to Sacramento in January. I thought I had probably better use it some time this year and looked up recipes on google.

The first one sounded great: Chestnut Flour Gnocchi. Mmmm gnocchi. Then I read the description:

How long until they are cooked? There lies the rub. For after the 20-minutes-or-so recommended...they certainly weren't cooked through. Nor after 40 minutes. At some point a man has go to eat, so when you can't wait anymore, take them out and serve on a hot plate with shreds of cheese and pepper.

These certainly could be called priest-stranglers or strangleanyones.

Ok. Maybe not.

Moving on, I found a recipe for a chestnut flour cake with pine nuts and rosemary...mmmm, intriguing. No mention of strangling here, but this charming warning set me back a bit:

Chestnut flour is completely unknown in some provinces of Italy, and I doubt that anyone's ever tried to introduce it, despite it's being an inexpensive, healthy, and nutritious food suited for the poor and those unafraid of wind*.
Re wind: Chestnuts rival beans in this respect.

Strangle or fart? It's up to you. The second recipe also warns against using chestnut flour that isn't "perfectly fresh." In this case I may be glad that my flour is probably past its "best by" date.

Updated to add
I chose "Fart" since I had a fresh supply of Bean-o on hand and figured I could stave off any ozone-layer-destroying results.

The Migliaccio chestnut cake is odd. It looks a bit...ok, a lot, like something unfortunate.


Both light-textured but very hearty. The oil I drizzled on top STAYED on top, so I poked some holes in the top to get it to ooze down. It seems entirely cooked in some spots and entirely uncooked in others. I can't say I give it a thumbs-up. If I ever get my hands on some more chestnut flour, I will try a different recipe.

Handy Kitchen Hint - Yogurt Cheese

I don't believe in low-fat yogurt. Or worse, non-fat yogurt. It is a tool of the devil.

The only yogurt that enters my home is Straus Family Creamery Organic Whole Milk Yogurt or its not-so-secret cousin, Trader Joe's European-Style Thick & Creamy Oraganic Whole Milk Yogurt.

As a secret member of the amazing Margaret Fox's (Cafe Beaujolais Cookbook)Lily Gilder's Society, I can't leave my fabulous whole-milk yogurt alone, but must further creamify it by draining off the water.

You can do this any number of ways - tying it in cheesecloth and hanging it from the sink handle (bad in warm weather), or putting it into a cloth in a colander in a bowl in the fridge, but I have a super-easy tool for making labneh, or thick yogurt: the salad spinner.

I line the spinner basket with a clean cloth dishtowel, dump the yogurt in, and let it drain into the bottom of the salad spinner in the fridge. This has the advantage of fitting together well and having a lid.

6 to 12 hours later, yum, there's your yogurt "cheese." Now just add some thin-sliced cucumbers and snipped fresh dill and you have a tasty tzatziki.

How my brain works

Proof that I have a very odd mental illness...

I have gotten some great cookbooks for review from DK Publishing including the lovely Spain and the World Table.

I have been keeping the cookbook in the bathroom for the past few weeks, where I get to look at it 30 seconds at a time.

The other day when I first awoke, I looked at a recipe for saffron consomme, which sounded amazing. I have never been able to make a consomme because I feel so guilty, boiling up all those ingredients and THROWING THEM AWAY to make a clear, flavorful soup.

The whole idea behind consomme is to get it as clear as crystal, which isn't always easy, and chefs go to great lengths, including refining the soup with egg shells, which collect stray bits of protein and fat.

This recipe is no different. I looked at the ingredient list and it included all the usual suspects - meat bones, veg - but it also contained more than half a pound of foie gras.

I stumbled out of the bathroom, stunned.

All day long I was plagued by the idea that a chef had come up with a recipe where you take foie gras that runs over $100/lb, cook it and throw it away.

Never mind that I do not eat meat. Or that even if I ate meat, I would never eat diseased goose liver.

It still galled me that the recipe expected you to make a consomme of foie gras. I honestly obsessed about it.

When I got home, I saw that my bleary early morning brain hadn't absorbed all the recipe. The foie gras was to be cut into cubes and served in the bottom of the soup bowls.

Suddenly, I felt better. Now anyone spending $50 on diseased poultry livers for this recipe would get to enjoy the full effect of chewing and tasting them.

And that, my friends, is how I am sick in the head.