Here’s something a little different.

I’m utterly unsophisticated when it comes to food. I can only cook two things: macaroni and cheese. Give me my chinese food and I’ll be happy (there’s one lady who says that when she thinks of me she thinks of Chinese food).

I’m a teatotaler basically all my life, so I don’t appreciate alcoholic beverages.

I’m not remotely a coffee connoisseur – heck, I drink the coffee at work. This is odd, given that if I don’t get regularly repeated doses of coffee during the day I’ll collapse in a miserable heap and, I don’t know, maybe die. Vietnamese coffee, with its sweetened condensed milk, is in a category of its own. I don’t like tea, and I basically don’t drink it. If I want to drink tea, that’s a dependable red flag that I’m sick.

But there is one thing that I’ve become more and more obsessed about, and that is exotic non-alcoholic drinks.

 
Anybody remember Orbitz, a clear drink from Canada that had jelly-like white spheres floating in it? I was fond of Orbitz because it was clean. Here’s the thing: I never drink soda pop, or at least the usual ones, and I’m fairly good at avoiding candy and other junk food. The main reason for this is that it sticks to my teeth, and that drives me nuts.

Anybody remember Everfresh Blackberry from 20 years ago? As you can see, I can still remember its great flavour to this day.

 

On rare occasions I’ll get the clean, exotic (and expensive) Bawl’s Guarana at 7-11. Other than this I stay away from energy drinks. Not my thing.

After playing soccer I would have no appetite, but I would drink like a fish. Banana milk seemed particularly appropriate. I’d drink banana milk a lot more often if I didn’t know it’s milk with a bunch of sugar added.

 
My interest in exotic non-alcoholic drinks really got going when I went to Dino’s on Notre Dame. There would be a whole lineup of immigrants (“a immagrunt”, as my grunting immagrunt friend would say) buying their exotic foods, but I would come to the counter with a big pile of just drinks. There is coconut water. There is sea moss, with its reputed health benefits (“make you strong like sea moss”). Sorrel has a great taste, with more punch to it than the other fruit juices. However, not everyone shares my opinion. I gave sorrel to one young lady, and behind my back she said it was the worst thing she ever drank.

 
There are also the Jamaican herbal drinks. These things are intense herbal delivery systems, not concocted to taste good – and it’s not uncommon to open a bottle and have more than 3/4 of it foam out onto the floor. For Christmas I had Power Roots – Roaring Lion Magnum, and I was reminded of the old Asterix comics where the druid makes a magic potion. A subset of these herbal drinks is the dedicated aphrodesiacs with the funny names. Ram Jam. Kok Shan! Is carnival every day. Fun fact: honey and ginseng are both aphrodesiacs.

I went through a persistent relationship with ginger beer. There’s nothing unusual about liking ginger beer, but I drank a lot of it. It would be typical for me to have a bottle of “beer” at my desk at work, often consumed from a shot glass. The ginger beer from Trinidad has a sweeter taste than the ginger beer from Jamaica, but the two types are both good. Ginger beer is a great, flexible, mixer, for example Concorde grape juice, water and ginger beer. I started by mixing it with licorice tea (when I first had a cup of licorice tea I felt relaxed – instantly!). I’m pleased with this mix: adding some ginger beer to a cup of hot honey/ginger tea, which you can get at a Chinese store as a gelatinous liquid. That drink has a nice bite to it, which is often what I want.

 

 
Serbat Wangi is a hot drink from Indonesia that has a role similar to hot chocolate, but unlike hot chocolate which seems like a lump of cocoa, this sweet drink contains a bunch of mysterious herbs. You can get this at your Chinese store, or at least the one across the street from Dino’s. Lately I’ve been adding marshmallows and a limited amount of instant coffee for a nice hot drink. Or cinnamon.

One can get aloe juice. Yes, aloe is the stuff you put on your skin. It’s nice and clean, but hardly exciting. I recommend the sugar-free version.

 

 
After my long relationship with ginger beer I came across what was obviously the elusive wonder drink: Ginseng Up, specifically the original flavour. I get this Trinidadian drink from Caribbean Shield on Notre Dame. I think the name is a bit deceptive. It’s composed of white grape juice, ginseng, honey and other ingredients, supposedly all natural. It’s a clean drink with a tart taste that you can take in sips. The Original of this is my favourite beverage.

 
I went to DeLuca’s on Portage, where they have some interesting drinks. They have Chinotto, which is Italy’s answer to Coca-Cola.

 

 
At DeLuca’s I discovered birch beer, made by Boylan’s, a New Jersey company that’s been making these since 1891. I’m sure that just the name birch beer is part of the draw for me. It is flavoured by the distilled oils from the sap of birch bark, and uses cane sugar as a sweetener. I originally found that it has a special taste (” It will not blow you away when you drink it, but it leaves a taste in the mouth that makes you wonder how you could live without it.”) but my opinion has since come closer to earth. It is a superior soda pop with a nice, clean, simple taste, and we’ll leave it at that. I’ve seen Boylan’s beverages at four stores, including The Forks.

 

 
At DeLuca’s I encountered sarsaparilla, made by Maine Root. My dad tells me that root beer used to be called sarsaparilla, so that gives you an idea of the taste. Bonus: sarsaparilla is reputed to have specific useful health benefits. Speaking of root beer, Boylan’s makes its own root beer containing sassafrass, presumably with the carcinogenic elements removed. My opinion of it waxes and wanes in inverse proportion to its availability, but it is a special product that doesn’t taste the way you expect root beer to taste (I get a kick out of consuming it from a clay mug my dad made, made to look like a tree stump).

 

 
You should try mauby, or at least the noncarboated Nadia Mauby I got at Caribbean Shield. It’s a Caribbean drink made from the bark of a tree, and it tastes a like drink made from the bark of a tree (how do I know what bark tastes like?). It can be thick and it naturally tastes like bitter licorice, but they add sugar and spices. It is reputed to have health benefits.

 
Tap water will do the job of lubricating the body, and it’s low in calories, clean and inexpensive.

Some people will tell you that cane sugar doesn’t have the health problems including allergies that the commonly used corn syrup has, and cane sugar tastes better. There is a counterargument that it’s all sugar, and there are several sources of sugar.

corn syrup / the sugar debate

500 flavours of soda and soft drinks from around the world

Back in my student days I elected to put Dr. Pepper in the microwave. Just one of those weird things I do, and my friend laughed at me. I never got to show him that ad that I encountered many years later.

 

exotic non-alcoholic beverages – follow up