Date Shake

Date Shake
Basket Creations, $4.75 / 16oz with extra dates

Native to the area around Iraq, the date palm has spread around the world thanks to its rich, sticky fruits and an ability to thrive in deserts.  First introduced to North America's southwest in the 1760s, the trees were subsequently planted by orchardists in arid regions of Nevada, California, and Arizona.  But despite the high quality of their products, the domestic market for dates has generally been lukewarm.  

One bump in popularity came in the 1930s, when Russ Nichol, owner of a roadside stand in the California desert, discovered that dates are a delicious addition to milkshakes.  Since the hot, dry areas where dates grow best are also great spots for a winter vacation, date shakes became a must-try refreshment.  

As the sunniest spot on earth, Yuma Arizona is both an ace date producer, and the kind of place where a milkshake makes a great lunch.  At Bard Date company's downtown storefront, Basket Creations, date shakes are available with your choice of ice cream and in either smooth or chunky formats.  Both are flavored with date puree, but the chunky version also includes a handful of roughly chopped dates that sink to the bottom of the cup and swell up as they soak in the dregs of melted ice cream, turning into a kind of accidental custard.  

Not in date country?  It's easy to whip up your own date shake by soaking chopped dates in a little boiling water until soft and then blending them into a smooth paste that you can for topping or blending with vanilla ice cream.

Basket Creations
245 S Main St
Yuma AZ
928 / 341-9966 

Nab Vam

Nab Vam 
Seattle Center's Hmong New Year, $2

Food is a big component of Hmong New Year or Xyoo Tshiah, the only major holiday observed throughout the Hmong diaspora.  There's pork in several formats, there's a spicy salad of pounded green papaya, there's the chewy confection ncuav, a mochi cousin made from pounded sticky rice.

And there's nab vam, a dessert-drink hybrid so colorful it rivals the appliqued costumes worn by many of the young celebrants.  Although nab vam is often translated as "three color dessert," the variety of textures in each cup is at least as important and often more numerous.  As Sami Scripter and Sheng Vang explain in their excellent Hmong cookbook, Cooking from the Heart, "Westerners are  used to solid and liquid food being separate.  That is not so for the Hmong (and Asians in general), who delight in a variety of slippery, crunchy, chewy, and watery sensations all happening in the same dish.”

Nab vam's textural delights usually include crunchy crushed ice, runny caramel syrup, unctuous coconut cream, slippery strings of rice flour jelly, and bubbly balls of "frog egg" tapioca.  Extras might include crisp water chestnuts, soft-cooked beans, or juicy bits of chopped fruit.  How popular is it?  Scripter and Vang's standard recipe makes 40 servings.    

Pudding Shots

Pudding Shot
The Brick, $2

If you ever watched "Northern Exposure," you're familiar with the Brick Saloon, a warm but no-nonsense watering hole where--to mix sitcoms--everyone knows your name, and how you like your burger.  

Far from being a hollow facade figment of a set designer's imagination, the Brick is a real and venerable place, the oldest continuously operating bar in Washington state.  Opened in 1889, it was rebuilt in 1898, and renamed in honor of the 45,000 bricks used in the facade.   I didn't get either the bricks or the basement jail cell in the above picture, but you can see two of the bar's other famous features:  a wood bar imported from England via Cape Horn more than a century ago, and between the bar and the stools, a 23' brass-lined trough spittoon, though which water still flows today. 

In the foreground, a more recent feature of the Brick's menu:  a pudding shot.  Like jell-o shots, they're made by mixing up instant pudding with alcohol instead of water.   The seasonal flavor:  candy corn.  Holling might not approve, but Shelley certainly would. 

The Brick Saloon
100 W Pennsylvania Ave.
Roslyn WA
509/649-2643

Crema's Coffee Soda

Coffee Soda
Crema Coffee

I've always loved the idea of coffee-flavored soda but had yet to drink one that matched up with the nectar of my imagination.  Then came Crema.  Their coffee soda blows my expectations out of the water, in large part because it's not coffee-flavored, but actual coffee that they carbonate to order.  A rotating selection of cold-brews get poured into some kind of Rube Goldberg carbonating contraption that requires a (trainee?) barista to shake it vigorously for several minutes.  To that they add ice, mellow demerara simple syrup, and a zippy little twist of orange zest.  Bring on the 100% humidity!

Crema Coffee
15 Hermitage Ave
Nashville, TN
615/255-8311

Charlton's Coffeehouse

Drinking Chocolate
R. Charlton's Coffeehouse

Since just a whiff of Swiss Miss can send me back to snowy afternoons in the 1970s, I wasn't all that surprised to find that among the many more-or-less historical flavors available in Colonial Williamsburg's pubs, restaurants, and kiosks, there is a time machine disguised as hot chocolate.  

The building that houses R. Charlton's became a coffeehouse soon after it was constructed in 1750, and was under Richard Charlton's management by the mid-1760s.  Growing up in London, Charlton would have had ample chance to experience that city's thousands of coffee shops and to appreciate that the eponymous beverage was actually less important than the exchange of ideas and opinions it fueled.   Located conveniently close to the colonial Capitol, Charlton's Coffeehouse also provided newspapers and a particular kind of privacy to its men-only clientele.  It was a place where they could gather to freely discuss the news of the day, and, on occasion, to act; some of the events of the October 1765 Stamp Act resistance took place at Charlton's.

In 2008-9, the Victorian house that had been built on Charlton's foundation was removed to a new site and the coffeehouse was reconstructed using historic records.  Attention to period details shows in everything from the reception room's eye-popping wallpaper, to the entertaining gossip shared by the prattling "Mrs. Charlton" (below left), to the choice of complimentary beverages offered to each visitor:  tea, coffee, or chocolate.  

Every single person in my tour group chose the chocolate, served in small china cups with cream on the side.  Like the building itself, this chocolate is an 18th century revival funded by the Mars confectionery company's historic division.  The process of making it is laborious but so low-tech that it is sometimes demonstrated on site:  cacao beans are roasted, cleaned, crushed, ground, and diluted with hot water.  To cut the beverage's natural bitterness, Charlton's adds an historically accurate blend of sugar, cinnamon, vanilla, nutmeg, anise, cayenne, and orange zest--far-flung flavorings that taste nearly as exotic now as they would have to the building's original patrons.  

Cheerwine

Cheerwine

For many American entrepreneurs in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the bubbling sludge of their money-making dreams was soda syrup, not Texas crude.  Since sodas started out as a way of administering tonics and medicines, pharmacists were responsible for many of the field's early successes (including Hires root beer in 1876 and Coca-Cola in 1886), but fizzy drinks soon transitioned away from their medicinal origins.  

While the early sodas featured roots and herbs with some claim to therapeutic properties (ginger, coca, birch, etc.), their younger cousins leaned towards fun, fruity flavors.  In 1917, a North Carolina general store owner named L.D. Peeler tinkered with a commercial recipe for soda syrup until he arrived at an extra-bubbly formula for dark cherry soda that he called Cheerwine.   

Licensed Cheerwine syrups were a hit at regional soda fountains, but Peeler expanded his market even further by taking advantage of the 1899 invention that allowed for the bottling of pre-mixed servings of carbonated beverages.  Today the Cheerwine Bottling Co., headed by Peeler's great-grandson, relies on yet another generation of technology to spread the word.  Thanks to social media, sponsorship deals, a appealingly retro logo, slick radio spots, zeigeist-y slogans ("Born in the South.  Raised in a Glass," "Keep Calm, Drink Cheerwine"), and a tour van that visits college campuses across the country, Cheerwine seems set to bubble on for another hundred years.  

Tet Treats

Banh Kep La Dua (above)
Hue Ky Mi Gia, $1.50

Che Ba Mau (below)
Hue Ky Mi Gia, $3.00

Originally opened in Saigon in 1959, the Hue Ky Mi Gia noodle restaurant now has a massive menu and two Seattle-area locations--but only at a temporary stall at Seattle Center's Tet Festival does Hue Ky Mi Gia dish up these New Year's delicacies.   Banh kep la dua is special waffle that gets its color and aroma from the leaves of the screwpine or pandan plant.  Che ba mau is a drinkable dessert:  iced coconut milk with brown sugar syrup, red beans, and chewy green noodles made from rice flour and--again--that addictive pandan extract. 

Raw Milk and Live Cookies

Raw Milk 
Dungeness Valley Creamery, $1.50/pint

Live Chocolate-Walnut Cookie
The Cookie Jar, $3

Whatever the dairy equivalent of "bread basket" might be, the Sequim-Dungeness Valley would have earned the title for much of the 20th century.  The arrival of the first cows in 1860 inaugurated a thriving industry; eventually the area boasted hundreds of dairy farms and thousands of cows, most of them Guernseys and Jerseys producing buttery high-fat milk.  

Over the last fifty years, though, Sequim-area dairying has declined.  The new norm emphasizes larger farms, industrialized techniques, lower-fat milk, and higher-yielding cows (typically Holsteins). 

One of two dairies remaining in the Valley today, the Dungeness Valley Creamery is extremely choosy about which trends it follows and which it bucks.  Located on the bluff above the Dungeness Spit, the creamery facility was built in 1992 by a family who have been in the dairy business since the 1970s.  The farm's 38 acres are home to 60 vintage Jersey cows, each with her own name and personality.  Their milk is sold unpasteurized and unhomogenized, so that the cream rises to the top, and since 2006 Dungeness Valley Creamery milk has also been certified raw.  

The milk is cold and frothy with the sweet-clean aftertaste of mown grass.  It begs to be put to work washing something down, and the Creamery has the perfect partner on hand:  Live Cookies.  Available in a number of flavors, these substantial treats feature flours ground at the last minute and stored cold in order to maintain their nutrients.  

The Creamery's stock of Live Cookies is limited to what was left over after Live Bread Shoppe owner/baker Sherry Fry closed her Sequim-based business in 2012.  Fry's new nutritional counseling business in Puyallup will eventually offer Live Cookies, along with a cookbook, Nutrition From the Cookie Jar. 

(If you're navigating using Sequim's free tourist map, note that the Creamery's location is marked incorrectly.)

Dungeness Valley Creamery
1915 Towne Rd
Sequim WA
360/683-0716

Cherry Shrub and Shrubet

Shrub

Acetic acid is powerful stuff, capable of clearing your sinuses, cleaning your bathroom, or transforming bland and perishable cucumbers into zingy pickles with a near-infinite shelf life.   

Along with water, acetic acid is the essential ingredient in vinegar--but it need not be the dominant flavor.  Brewing vinegar directly from tasty ingredients such as fruits and grains ("pure vinegars") or adding these ingredients to vinegar prior to a second, shorter fermentation process ("compound vinegars") can result in something more like a liqueur:  smooth, intense, aromatic, and even drinkable, usually as an apertif, digestif, or diluted into a kind of spritzer.  In many places, that mixture of fruit vinegar and water or soda water is known as "shrub". 

Home-brewed compound vinegars have a long history and after a quiet spell have seen a recent bump in prominence.   Making your own is easy (shrub is the jam of lazy DIYers) and relatively cheap if you use the fecund-est local fruit of the moment (in my case, cherries).  


Cherry Shrub

4 lbs cherries, washed, sorted, stemmed, and pitted
4 c vinegar (I used Bragg's apple cider; depending on your fruit you could use white, balsamic...)
1/2 c sugar (to taste)

-Put the fruit in a large non-reactive pot or several glass jars and add enough vinegar to cover.  
-Let the fruit sit, covered, at room temperature temperature for a week, stirring well each day. 
-On Day 7 or 8, stir in the sugar and heat the fruit to a low boil for about an hour.  
-Remove from the heat and when the mix is cool enough to handle, strain the liquid into clean jars.  Reserve the fruit solids (see below). 
-Mix chilled shrub with water or soda water to taste, or sip straight.  

 
















Bonus:  Shrub-et!

Why waste all that yummy fruit mush?  If shrub makes for a refreshing drink, it's off-the-charts invigorating as a frozen treat.  

leftover shrub fruit (of course this is best done with fruits such as pitted cherries that are entirely edible)
sugar to taste
water
spices and flavorings to taste
approx. 2 T vodka (depending on the volume of fruit)

-If your fruit is chunkier that you like in a frozen dessert, whizz it in a food processor.  
-Add just enough water to dissolve about 1/2 c of sugar; stir, shake in a jar, or heat gently until the sugar grains completely melt.  
-Mix the fruit and syrup.  
-Add any desired spices or flavorings (to my cherry mush I added a little cinnamon, ground cardamom, and black pepper, plus about 1 T of almond extract).  
-Stir in a little neutrally-flavored alcohol to keep the mush from freezing rock-solid. 
-Pour into a plastic tub or bowl and place in the freezer.  To create a softer texture, break up the ice crystals by raking the shrubet with a fork every hour or so as it freezes, then give it a final fluff about 15 minutes before serving. 

For more on shrub's history and resurgence in popularity, check out this NYT article. 

Triple XXX Rootbeer

Rootbeer
Triple XXX, from $2.75

Although "root beer" is catchier, "root-bark-herb-and-berry beer" would be more accurate; the first commercial recipe, launched by pharmacist Chester Hires at the 1876 Philadelphia Centennial Exhibition, called for more than 25 different flavorings. 

Just after the turn of the century, the Galveston Brewing Company introduced a range of "XXX" soft-drink syrups, including ginger ale and root beer.  During Prohibition, Galveston supplied its syrups to more than 100 licensed franchises around the country.  Among them was Renton's Triple XXX Rootbeer, the first drive-in restaurant in the Pacific Northwest when it opened in 1930.  

The Issaquah branch--in its current location since 1969--and one in Indiana are the only surviving outposts of the XXX empire, but only the Indiana restaurant still uses the original XXX syrup; the Issaquah XXX sources its syrup from Coca-Cola, which uses a 1930s recipe.  

Although Triple XXX is no longer a drive-in, the parking lot is often lined with classic cars, whose owners gather at the restaurant for monthly shows and swapmeets.  Customers head indoors to order--and to ogle the accumulation of vintage memorabilia that clings to every wall and surface.  The root beer comes in "regular" or "supersize" glass mugs covered in velvety frost; it can also be ordered without ice, for an additional charge.  And of course there are root beer floats, made using Darigold ice cream.  

Triple XXX
425 NE Gilman Blvd,
Issaquah WA
425/392-1266

Don's Pharmacy

Don's Pharmacy Soda Fountain 
Cherry Lime Phosphate (above)

Chocolate Milkshake (below)

Head past the world-class soap selection, gardening tools, and racks of novelty greeting cards to the back of Don's Pharmacy and you'll find a soda fountain installed in 1962 and untouched by the intervening years.  Seating is at your choice of booth or counter stool; service is quick and sassy--but completely genuine, like a sharp-tongued big sister rather than a gum-smacking, beehived retro cliche.  
The waitress is happy to explain some of the menu's more archaic items ("Brown Cow" is a Coke float, "Green River" is a lime soda) and to make recommendations.  She makes milkshakes (below) as thick as spackle from milk and hard-packed ice cream, with an entire second shake in reserve in the mixing cup.  

You can also get a made-to-order phosphate, a tart relic from soda's early days.  Although pharmacists initially introduced soda fountains as a way of making medicine more palatable (see my earlier post on the 1850s soda fountain at New Orleans' Pharmacy Museum) the public soon developed a taste for sweet syrup and fizzy water, minus the medicine.  The addition of phosphoric acid to drinks created a puckery sourness that found many fans; phosphates were a popular and prominent soda fountain offering from the late 19th century through the 1930s.  

Today many so-called phosphates, including those served at Don's, are made with citric acid rather than the harder-to-get phosphoric.  Although the citric acid gave my cherry-lime faux phosphate a deliciously sharp edge (waitress:  "Like drinking a sour patch kid!"), phosphoric acid aficionados claim that nothing matches the experience of genuine article.  

Don's Pharmacy Soda Fountain
1151 Water Street
Port Townsend, WA
360/385-2622

1151 Water StWA 98368

(360) 385-0969

Penland Gingerade

Gingerade

I've been attending residential art classes at the Penland School of Crafts in North Carolina off and on since 1996. What with juggling 24-hour studio access and whatever work-study job I've been assigned, I tend to push myself hard while I'm there, often teetering on the edge of what could be a disastrous illness.

Gingerade to the rescue! Over the years, the Penland Coffee Shop has migrated and mutated, but this spicy, invigorating brew has been a blessedly constant presence on the menu. I can't begin to calculate how many gallons I must have bought.

Now I make this versatile tonic at home, bringing a little bit of Penland magic to whatever creative or physical challenge I happen to be facing. Wretched winter cold? Hot with extra honey, and maybe a touch of whiskey. Demoralizing summer cold? Full-strength over ice. Looming exhibition deadline? Fancied up with seltzer and a lime wedge.

Gingerade

(As written the recipe recipe makes 2 quarts, but it's easy math to scale up for bigger batches.)

1 c peeled and thinly sliced ginger

1 t whole cloves
4 cinnamon sticks
2 whole lemons, washed and quartered with peels left on

2 quarts water

Combine the above ingredients and simmer for 2 hours. Strain out the chunks and while the liquid is still hot add 2 cups of orange juice and 1 cup (or to taste) of your favorite sweetener (honey, agave, sugar, brown sugar, or succanat work fine). Stir until the sweetener is dissolved. Serve hot or cold, straight or diluted with still or fizzy water.

Coco Rico

Coco Rico

As a genre, "tropical" drinks tend to feature a half-dozen garish flavors skewered together by a tiny umbrella (real or implied). Not so Coco Rico, a single-note coconut soda so stripped down it's almost shy.

First produced in Puerto Rico in the 1930s, Coco Rico is clear but creamy, fizzy but soft, aromatic but without suntan lotion overtones. Singles are $0.89 at Rising Sun Produce in Seattle.

Soda Fountain

Soda Fountain
New Orleans Pharmacy Museum, admission $5

Housed in what was once the premises of the country's first licensed pharmacist, the New Orleans Pharmacy Museum offers a rollicking look at the health care endured by our ancestors, featuring: leeches, bone saws, chocolate-covered poison pills, drug-laced tampons, and reusable syringes the size of a small jackhammer.

In a cheerier corner near the front there's a soda fountain dating from 1855. Made from black, white and pink marble, it's an appropriately grand monument to the pharmacist's skill at making the medicine go down. Back in the days when most medication was administered as shots of off-puttingly bitter liquid, pharmacists discovered that flavored syrups could be beneficial, whether added directly to the medicine or mixed with fizzy water and served as a palate cleanser.

Customers grew so fond of the sweet drinks that soda fountains flourished and became a standard feature of pharmacies for more than a century. Many early soft drinks contained narcotic ingredients, and many of today's most popular drinks are based on those original recipes. It's a new take on Hippocrates: "Let soft drinks be thy medicine and medicine thy soft drink.

Sadly, you won't get a soda at the Pharmacy Museum--or if you did, it would be far from a health tonic. Their ornate soda fountain still functions, but all of the pipes and spigots are made from lead.

Hurricane

Hurricane
Pat O'Brien's, $8

After you've spent the afternoon screaming encouragement at a stream of dressed-up dogs roaming the streets during the Mystic Krewe of Barkus--Mardi Gras' only canine-friendly parade (see below)--it makes a certain kind of sense to recuperate in a smoky bar screaming Elton John songs over foot-tall glasses of rum dressed up as fruit juice.

Pat O'Brien's is a legendary and labyrinthine bar complex with lounges, a courtyard, a cavernous dueling piano bar, and a house drink, the Hurricane, whose original purpose was to maximize rum consumption. The bar's founder came up with the recipe during World War II when cheap booze ran freely but top shelf liquors were scarce; crafty salesmen required bars to buy dozens of cases of rum per every one case of whiskey. At O'Brien's the surplus rum was sweetened and served over ice in a glass the size and shape of a hurricane lamp.

Today you can take your Hurricane glass home as a souvenir--which seems like kind of a cruel thing to suggest to a drunk person.

Switchel

Switchel

Nutrition-wise, one of the few things I have going for me is the fact that I don't much care for soft drinks. The most popular pops, in particular, leave me cold. Pepsi? Eh. Coke? I probably average one serving every two or three years.

When I do indulge in sweet, fizzy drinks, they tend to have a more old-fashioned bent. I enjoy root beer--with or without ice cream--and birch beer, when I stumble across it. I like ginger ale and love ginger beer, the hotter the better.

And it turns out that I'm a big fan of a drink even less likely that these to appear on grocery shelves or in a gas station cooler: switchel. Flavored with molasses, ginger, and vinegar, it's spicy, stomach-settling, and weirdly refreshing. And luckily, it's really easy to make.

Like so many soft drinks, switchel has historic and utilitarian roots. It first appeared in the 17th century in the Caribbean, where molasses was a plentiful by-product of the sugar refining industry. A couple of centuries later in America, switchel was a kind of proto-energy drink, providing electrolytes and hydration to sweaty laborers doing the hot, heavy work of making hay.

I based my own attempt on a recipe in Ellis Sandor Katz's Wild Fermentation, which was in turn adapted from Stephen Cresswell's Homemade Root Beer, Soda, and Pop. I reduced the amount of sugar and chose not to dilute the syrup to drinking strength right away; the mix stores well in the fridge, so I just make it up as needed, adding a few tablespoons to a glass of cold soda water or a mug of hot water.

Switchel

1/2 c apple cider vinegar
1/2 c sugar
1/2 c molasses
2 inches grated fresh ginger
1/2 c water

Heat all of the ingredients until just boiling, then simmer for 10-15 minutes. Let cool and strain to remove the ginger. Store, refrigerated, in a jar. Dilute to taste with hot water, cold water, or seltzer.

Shikhye

Shikye
Yakult

Shikye is a sweet Korean beverage made from cooked rice that is quickly fermented with malt water, then sweetened and flavored with ginger. This commercial version made by Yakult (tagline: "Nostalgia drink since 1993") is as sweet as syrup but oddly watery and clouded by bloated rice particles. It tastes almost like it would be a hit with hummingbirds.

Ramos Gin Fizz

Ramos Gin Fizz

Muriel's, $8

New Orleans was the birthplace of the cocktail and over the years many concoctions have been heralded as the city's favorite. In 2008 the debate was silenced when the "Save the Sazerac" campaign succeeded in having the rye-and-bitters mixture invented in 1795 by Frenchman Antoine Amedee Peychaud named as New Orleans' "official" cocktail.

Well, hmph, I say: that just leaves more Ramos Gin Fizzes for me. My own new "official" cocktail is another New Orleans classic; a venerable and time-consuming froth that tastes delightfully like someone spilled gin on an uncooked meringue. Here's how the Museum of the American Cocktail tells its story:

"Around 1880 bartender Henry C. Ramos developed the drink in the Imperial Cabinet Saloon at Gravier and Carondelet Streets. He took it with him when he purchased The Stag saloon further down Gravier Street. 'It's like drinking a flower,' one poet eulogized. Properly prepared, each drink was shaken for five minutes, or, 'until your hand freezes to the shaker.' Ramos employed 'shaker boys,' (as many as 35, it is said during Mardi Gras season of 1915) who did nothing but shake fizzes."

The story provides a fascinating glimpse into the economy and society of a heavy-drinking culture. Bars were lucrative and strongly competitive; it's hard to judge how much of mythology of mixology was fact and how much was hype. Was the 5-minute shake for real? Or an exaggeration calculated to add glamor or justify prices? Cocktails were a kind of magic--particularly when the recipe for a popular drink like the Ramos was considered by most to be a guarded secret. It's interesting to imagine the reverberations when one of the bartenders who had previously worked with Ramos defected to the St. Charles Hotel...and had the Ramos Gin Fizz recipe printed on the back of his new business cards:

How to Prepare This Famous Gin Fizz:

2 Teaspoonsfull of Sugar

4 Drops of Orange Flower Water

1 Teaspoonfull Lime Juice

1 1/2 ounce of Good Gin

Crushed Ice

Small dash of Sparkling Water

White of 1 Egg

1 1/2 ounce of Sweet Milk

Shake well for half minute

Serve in thin glass.

According to the Museum of the American Cocktail, the Ramos also had friends in high--and distant--places:

"By the time the Ramos Gin Fizz was the favorite drink of 'Kingfish' Huey Long, governor--and later U.S. Senator for Louisiana, the drink had made the move to the Roosevelt Hotel. In 1935, Long transported the Roosevelt bartender, Sam Guarino along with him to New York City to ensure the drink was authentic. Huey insisted on personal quality control measures. 'I'm merely sampling this to make sure you gentlemen are getting the real thing.' After sampling five of them, Huey proclaimed, 'And this is, gentlemen, my gift to New York.' He dragged Guarino with him to Washington so, likewise, he could have an uninterrupted flow of New Orleans fizzes. In historian Shelby Foote's words, 'The whole Congress cheered him for that.'"

Muriel's

801 Chartres Street
New Orleans, LA
504/568-1885

Blackberry Wine

Blackberry Wine

Pasek Cellars, $10

The drizzly Seattle summer has driven me to drink.

Just after I abandoned all hope of picking any decent blackberries this year, I came across a bottle of blackberry wine at the Whole Foods just down the street. While buying a bottle of wine from down the block doesn't satisfy my hunter-gatherer impulses quite as handily as collecting free fruit from the alley out back, I was willing to compromise.

As soon as I pulled the cork, the room filled with the unmistakeable perfume of a blackberry thicket on a hot August afternoon, sweet and earthy with that faintly tart edge. I wouldn't have been surprised to see a bumblebee buzz by. The taste was even more intense, but sippable rather than syrupy.

Blackberry is only one of the many fruit wines made by Pasek Cellars, a winery based near Mount Vernon, north of Seattle. At their tasting room (an easy detour off I-5), you can try wines made from guava, passionfruit, pineapple, loganberry, raspberry, and cranberry (Pasek's best-seller), as well as a couple of grape wines and a dessert wine made from Arabica coffee. Many of their ingredients are grown nearby; the blackberry wines are made from Oregon fruit. For the sake of the 2011 vintage, I hope Oregon had better berry weather this year than we did!

Manhattan Special

Manhattan Special

Five or six years ago, I was visiting friends in Brooklyn when I heard vague rumors about a locally made coffee-flavored soda with an historic pedigree. I set my sights on this exotic new quarry, trekking from corner store to bodega to corner store in a futile search for "Manhattan Special". Most people had heard of it; nobody had it to sell. My frenzy culminated in an act of sweet-toothed stalking: I bused over to Williamsburg and knocked on the factory door.

And knocked again. And again.

The guy who eventually answered the door was surprised to find a tourist in search of soda, and politely regretful that he couldn't direct me to a single neighborhood store that would have Manhattan Special in stock.

I admitted defeat and left town. When I eventually tried Manhattan Special it was in Oregon, of all places, where a neighbor nostalgic for her East Coast childhood had taken to special ordering it by the case. It tasted more or less like what I always expected coffee would taste like before I'd ever had any: a little fizz and a lot of sweetness rounding off the bitter espresso's sharp edges. The "secret recipe" dates from 1895 and is heavy on coffee beans and cane sugar (the exception being the modern diet version, which contains NutraSweet). The label appears to date from about 1922, and is heavy on drama, verve, and allusions to Rudolph Valentino.

Fast forward to 2010, and Manhattan Special is still in production, still a nostalgic novelty, but now somewhat easier to find thanks to internet sales and growing interest in niche and vintage foods. In this NYT article, read more about the brother and sister behind Manhattan Special, who took over the family business as teenagers after their father's murder.