Beverage of Choice

In college, my roommate and I bought Mountain Dew by the case - and we could easily go through two cases in a week. (Her mother subsidized this addiction.) We built a shrine out of Mountain Dew cans to a quarterback (who shall remain nameless) whose face happened to be plastered on the cans because he was headed to the Superbowl, and at the time his uniform was a good match for Mountain Dew's logo.

I have not kept pop in my house since after I took the Bar Exam, except for maybe a random purchase here and there, but I have a weakness for ordering pop at restaurants. (Except last summer when I was making an effort to drink 9 glasses of water ever day, and I didn't have any room left over for soda!) In addition to drinking a lot of water last summer, I started reading about local foods and real foods, and obviously, soda didn't make it on my shopping list. But lately, in spite of my continuing interest in local, real foods, I have been craving soda. Especially Mountain Dew. My boss is not a coffee person, but her love of Mountain Dew seems to be contagious.
I'd like to say that this is just a prop, or an old photo from college, but it isn't. After looking at every liquid substance in my house this evening, and discovering (not at all to my surprise) that none of them were Mountain Dew, I headed to the grocery store with a short list - I wanted a 20 ounce bottle of soda for right now, and the ingredients to make homemade ginger ale tonight.

I read this post on Table of Promise and was excited to see a very simple home-made replacement for soda. (COB is more hard-core than me when it comes to high-fructose corn syrup.) I checked out the original recipe, and headed to the store for ginger and seltzer water. (I've never bought raw ginger root before.)

I used a cup and a half of turbinado sugar instead of honey like COB or (presumably) pure cane sugar like the original.
I did this for two reasons. First, turbinado sugar is less processed than white sugar. As the packaging from the sugar I bought today explains, "Turbinado Sugar is the natural alternative to white sugar. It is harvested from 100% sugar cane. But unlike white sugar . . . Turbinado Sugar is what remains after raw sugar is washed. Once the impurities in raw sugar have been washed away, turbinado sugar remains, with a natural coating of sweet golden molasses." (And I always believe everything corporate food processors tell me. Stay tuned for more on this topic . . .) Second, I have always wanted to buy a bag of this sugar, but 24 ounces sell for $5, and I've never had such a good excuse to spend money on this unnecessary item before. (Also, while I could have used local honey like COB, the fact that my ginger came from Thailand sort of makes the origin of the sweetener a moot point. And since I don't even know if I'm going to like the finished product, I didn't want to waste perfectly wonderful honey.)

I mixed the sugar with a cup of water, and a little over a cup of raw, peeled, chopped ginger.
I brought it to a boil, and now it is steeping. I will leave it in the fridge overnight.
I will post pictures of the finished product when we drink it.