Saft Rabarber and Japanese Borscht
Guest starring: my mom.
Saft Rabarber
A visit from my mother almost always include a trip (or more) to Ikea. We usually don't go shopping in the food store down by the checkouts, but while I was waiting in a mile-long line to pay for some coat hooks and a Besta, my mom wandered over there to kill some time . . . and then wandered back with a bottle of pink juice. I automatically assumed it was lingonberrysomethingorother, but no. It was concentrated rhubarb juice. Well that's new. I like new. I also like rhubarby things.
Upon closer inspection, the main ingredient of Saft Rabarber is sugar, so this is more like a syrup than a concentrated fruit juice. I made a pitcher according to the directions and . . . . meh. Both my mom and I agreed that it's too much sugar and not enough rhubarb, so even if you added more concentrate to the mix, it wouldn't really help. So what to do with the rest of the bottle? A trip to the local farmer's market provided some unexpected inspiration.
At one of the booths that was selling homemade preserves (because you can't have a farmer's market without several booths of jammery), there was a billboard of adult beverage suggestions one could make with jam. In the mix was a drink that called for sparkling water, lime juice, gin and rhubarb jam. I just happened to have all those ingredients at home, so I decided to try the recipe substituting the syrup for the jam. The measurements went a little something like this:
Some Saft Rabarber
Some sparkling water, but more
A bit of lime juice
A shot of gin
I probably should have garnished it to make it look fancier, but all I had on hand at the time was some arugula and a potato.
This? This incarnation of rhubarb syrup is really, really tasty. Alcohol DOES make things better! And I suspect the lime gives it a kick that the syrup is missing. This is a great summery drink that I intend on making again. Back to Ikea for more syrup! And let's look for cheap shelves at the scratch & dent while we're there!
Calbee Borsch-Flavoured Potato Chips
First of all, European Series?! As in "more than one"? I am so on board with that. I'll have to keep trawling T&T. I look forward to some vichysoisse, hochzeitssuppe, fiskesuppe, gazpacho and goulash in the future. Don't let me down, Calbee!
I had to try these with my mother because she's the borscht expert. I have not eaten borscht since I was a child and was forced to eat it by, yes, my mother. There are few foods in this world I am not fond of, but beets is one of them. Especially pickled beets. I mean, the colour. It just isn't natural.
I'm a bad Ukrainian.
I suspected beet taste wouldn't exactly translate over to a potato chip, so I was confident that I could try these without having traumatic flashbacks to my childhood, sitting all afternoon at the kitchen table, not allowed to leave until I finished my soup, adding more and more sour cream to the bowl until it became a pink, goopy mess. Ah. Good times. ANYWAY. Here are two takes on Borsch flavoured chips.
Mom: They smell like salt & vinegar chips.
Me: They smell like ketchup chips.
Mom: Ew. No way.
Mom: They definitely have a vegetable taste. It's pungent and it "hits you like whammo!". They taste like borscht, if you think about it. Actually, it reminds me of borscht when it's made with beet leaves. They taste like the beet leaves.
Me: They're somewhat reminiscent of the minestrone flavoured chips. They sort of taste like Campbell's vegetable soup crossed with a ketchup chip, but not really. It's less tomatoey. It definitely tastes like a vegetable . . . or maybe several vegetables cooked down and mashed together. Kind of like V8 juice without the tomato.
The verdict: they're okay. They're not horrifying (despite the beet implications), but they're not awesome. It's very Japanese in that its vegetabley and mild.
What's especially nice about Calbee chips is that the bags aren't huge. They come with as many chips that should be in a small, snack-sized chip bag, if it wasn't 80% air. I'd be more willing to review all of President's Choice's weird chip flavours if they came in sizes other than "gigantobag."