Nice to talk to Dad and Mom today. I mentioned my hobby of the last week or so - homemade ginger ale. I guess I got a big kick out of it because you think of pop as one of those things that is produced by magic and you can only get from the store. But actually it's ludicrously simple to make at home. The basic is just to put yeast in some sugar water, close the lid and keep it at room temperature for a while. Within a day (I actually find it really just takes a few hours), the bottle will be tight with pressure and full of fizziness. Presto!
So you can flavor the sugar water however you want - root beer, lemonade, or the Russian way -- with rye bread. But my favorite of course is ginger, especially because store bought ginger ale is never strong enough.
Here's the recipe with pictures etc: http://biology.clc.uc.edu/fankhauser/cheese/ginger_ale_ag0.htm
This website is also great for homemade cheeses! But that's for next month...
fair warning: be sure to read this note on alcohol content. Basically there is about 0.35 - 0.5 percent alcohol in yeast-fizzy drinks; the govt would classify this as non-alcoholic, and really you would need to drink 6 liters in under 2 hours to get the equivalent of one beer -- and if you do that, alcohol is the least of your problems considering you just downed thousands of calories of sugar. But it is there.
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Oh, and if you don't want to grate the ginger root (I don't - I always end up with bloody hands), you can either just put it in your food processor, or chop it up with a knife and throw it in some boiling water for a bit with sugar to make a ginger-infused syrup.
There is an article in the new Sunset Magazine about people who make stuff for fun. One guy made sausage, one woman made homemade soda pop. I think she used club soda and then made her own natural syrup infusions of everything to flavor it. They said in the article that it was delicious.
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