Add some sparkle to your day, the natural way.

As a follow-up to my last post, here is a picture of my blood orange soda-making attempt that is sitting on the table in front of me, as I type. I poured a bit more than one-third of a glass of the juice, then topped it with chilled Perrier sparkling mineral water. The soda water makes the drink taste a bit more sour than the juice alone, because of the carbonic acid. I don't really like this; I guess I didn't expect it to affect the flavour that much. You can still taste the blood orange, but it's just not the same as the commercially available drink. I guess my easy way out was just too easy to work! 

For those of you trying to make your own natural homemade blood orange soda, I would recommend doing it the conventional way (uh, well, as conventional as making your own flavoured soda can be), by making a syrup to mix with the carbonated water. That is to say, boil down the juice with some sugar to form a concentrated blood orange syrup, cool down completely, then add chilled sparkling mineral water to a few spoonfuls of this syrup per glass, adjusting the amount of syrup, according to taste preferences. If you're into the full making-from-scratch thing, you could even carbonate your own water. And no, I do not mean going out to buy a carbon-dioxide cylinder to manually shake up your own, or using yeast and the fermentation process for carbonation. Too much effort; it's not the way I roll, sorry. Domestic carbonation systems are now commercially available virtually everywhere, even at Target and K-mart, with models starting from $100 or even less. These systems use carbon dioxide as well, but you just have to press a button for them to release the desired amount of gas. One of the more widely known brands is called Sodastream (www.sodastream.com). 

I guess the advantages of making your own flavoured soda are that a) you're in control of what goes into your soda; b) you can control the amount of sugar you're consuming; c) you're being environmentally friendly, by reducing material waste; and d) you can have a fizzy drink whenever you feel like it, without having to drive, or walk, out to the supermarket! 

Enough about carbonated drinks, I have to talk about my latest snack obsession - chocolate-coated coffee beans! 

Chiasso Coffee Roasters: Choc-coated coffee beans
http://www.chiassocoffee.com.au/

It all started in the Summer of 2010, when I went to visit the Kauai Coffee Company plantation in Kaua'i, Hawai'i, where I bought a packet of their chocolate-covered peaberries. Prior to that time, I've never really taken an interest in coffee consumption, bar the iced frappacinos at Gloria Jeans Coffee (which I was positively addicted to at one stage - not sure if it was the sugar or the espresso content) and the occasional iced mocha, because I'm more of a tea person. While on the topic of Kauai Coffee, I should mention that all their coffee products are 100% Hawai'ian, and, in fact, all their coffee beans are from their own estate (where I visited). The beans are grown, processed and roasted on site. I remember one of the employees there saying that their coffee is better than Kona coffee, although the latter, which is produced by their sister island, the Big Island, is more popular and famously represents 'Hawai'ian coffee'. Here's their website address, if you're interested in reading more about them: http://store.kauaicoffee.com/kauai-coffee-choc-covered-peaberries-p78.aspx. They do accept internet orders, but, unfortunately for us southern hemisphere-ites, shipping costs as much as the products themselves.

But where was I? Chocolate-covered coffee beans. Recently I've been finding that I like buying them and keeping one in my handbag, for when I'm feeling peckish or in need of a coffee hit. My latest purchase was from the Chiasso Coffee Roasters stand at the Good Food and Wine show, the weekend before last. They are a Brisbane-based coffee company, which sources beans from international locations, but roasts them locally. I had a coffee made by them too, which tasted nice, but left a slight acidic taste on the palate, a bit like the 'Feeling Woolly' blend by Black Sheep Coffee. I can't remember which blend of coffee they used, but they said something about it being the 'House special'. The chocolate-covered coffee beans are quite yummy, but I find that the actual beans in the centre are quite a bit harder than the ones made by other brands, such that if you're not careful, the hard pieces of the bean could scratch almost painfully against your gums when you're chomping on one. Sadly, I have yet to come across a brand of chocolate-covered coffee beans better than the one from Hawai'i.