At the beginning of 2008, this blog would have been called "Just another shitty day..." a lot can change in a short period of time and I'm so thankful for it!
Way back in July, when I brought my Soda Stream home from filming Horse Master with Julie Goodnight, I said that I wanted to find some Coca-Cola syrup for it. I hadn't been able to until a week or so ago, when a fellow WriMo saw my bottle and asked if we had a carbonation system of our own. We got to talking, and it turns out that she and her husband have a Mr. BreakMate carbonation system and that Coke syrup is available through the website and that they just had ordered a case of syrup. For $10, I procured my own liter of syrup and set about making my own Coke.
The syrup isn't as concentrate as the syrups from Soda Stream, so it took some playing around to make the perfect Coke. I finally got it figured out; five shots of syrup per bottle of water. It's a lot, but it's worth it. Even if I only get ten bottles of Coke out of the deal (which makes it $1.00/bottle), I've saved money.
Not to mention the fact that I'm thrilled to death to be able to make my own Coke!
I learned so much during the week I spent at Julie Goodnight's, but there's something I physically brought home that I'm so excited about and it's not even horse-related. Lucy, friend and assistant instructor, brought a Soda Stream to Julie's.
This is pretty much the coolest thing on the planet (aside from Eloise and Ripley, that is). What this little do-hickey does is carbonate water, to which you add syrup for flavor. You fill the bottle with tap water, screw it onto the Soda Stream and add gas until it farts three times (which is quite entertaining for the teenagers of the house).
We spend a lot of money on pop in this house. Yes, I know it's unhealthy, but I just can't give up my Coke. I'm rarely home, so any Coke drinking I do happens at work - any pop at home disappears. The kids and their friends can kill a twelve-pack in a day, which adds up quickly.
After I saw this at Julie's, I made up my mind that I wasn't buying any more pop for the house. It wasn't going to happen. One bottle of syrup is about $6.00 and makes the equivalent of thirty-three twelve-ounce cans of pop. The calorie difference between commerical soda and soda made at home is huge! Each serving has 35 calories compared to the 100+ calories in commercial soda. The reason for the difference is that the Soda Stream syrup is made with half sugar and half splenda. I have no beef whatsoever with high fructose corn syrup, in fact, I really, really love it. I don't really like the taste of splenda, so the "cola" flavor doesn't work for me at all. However, the kids don't care about the taste. If they want to drink a pop, they can just make it, 'cause this mommy hasn't bought a single case of it in a month!
They've got a fairly large selection of syrups, both caffeinated and non. So far, my favorite is the cranberry-raspberry syrup. RockCrawlinChef is partial to the lemon-lime, and the kids like the cola.
I do have a crazy idea, though, of buying a thing of Coke syrup and trying it out with the Soda Stream. Wish me luck with that one.
