I’m five years old, and it’s a hot San Diego day. I’m at the pool at NAS Miramar with my mom, enjoying the cool water. When lunchtime comes, I get a hot dog and a Cragmont cream soda.
To me, cream soda means Summer. It means an Olympic-sized pool and hot, white concrete and the smell of ‘suntan lotion’. It means mom lazing in the vinyl structure of a folding lounge chair, while I try to move as fast as I can without a life guard yelling at me to stop running.
I’ve had cream soda from time to time since then. Heck, I’ve probably bought two 2-litre bottles in the past 12 months! But it never tastes as good as it did when I was five, on those long, hot Summer days.
Snow White out of the local garage cooler. So cold that when you pop the cap ice crystals form in the bottle turning it into delicious, bubbly slush. Sneak out back, ride the derelict snowmobiles and search automobile carcasses for items of interest. Bike back home, and chase the girls around with the red striped garter snake we found.
A taste can take you back almost as easily as a scent. Coke-and-peanuts (with cane sugar Coke) always puts me in mind of coming in from playing out back of the family shop and hanging out with my Mom, usually reading. Coke-and-peanuts was her standard afternoon snack in the summer. I don’t generally like peanuts all the much, but sometimes I still do it, to savor the memories, rather than the flavor.
On a less nostalgic note, I love cream soda. I recently discovered Sprecher cream soda, and it is outstanding. (I may possibly have been spending too much time at the local Rocket Fizz lately.)
Recently I found a local store carrying a butterscotch cream soda, I took a swallow and thought, ‘this is evil, like Ben and Jerry’s Creme Brulee ice cream was evil.’
I remember having cream soda with ice cream sandwiches back when I was five or six. Loved the stuff, but I can’t remember the local brand we had in Minnesota.
Not long ago, I tried Crush brand cream soda in Canada. Not bad, but nowhere near as good as what I remember drinking in 1960–61.
I never had cream soda til I was in college, and then it became pretty much my favorite drink.
Sadly, I became diabetic a few years back, and the only locally-available diet cream soda is wretchedly horrible, so I must do without. Pray for my sanity!
Slight hijack, but has anyone made their own soda at home? How easy is it?
I have no idea how I’d add the carbonation… This recipe suggests adding a teaspoon of sodium bicarbonate, but I have always thought CO2 was injected into whatever liquid was being turned into soda…
Homemade root beer uses yeast, and I imagine you could probably go that route if you wanted.
Alternatively, dry ice would be possible although possibly dangerous if you added too much and the bottle blew up…
I made some a few years back. IIRC, I just added vanilla extract and sugar to some already carbonated spring water. It was pretty good!
There’s a guy (I don’t remember his name) who has a website devoted to such traditional home recipes (including one for root beer). I think he was based in Boulder, Colorado, or someplace like that.
I need to do a search for that site again. It’s cool!
I’ve made my own ginger beer a few times. It’s always come out with a slightly sulphuric taste, and the ginger wasn’t ‘hot’ enough (even when I added extra ginger and some cayenne pepper). Next time I try it, I’ll try just making the syrup and use the SO’s Soda Stream instead of fermenting it.
When I was a kid, my dad made carbonated drinks–usually grape juice or lemonade–with a Soda King Syphon, which used capsules of compressed CO[sub]2[/sub].
