Round 2! and how you can help earthquake relief efforts in Western China

Was going to make a cream soda for Saturday, but I'm not totally satisfied with my recipe yet...  my sister Sarah gave me some helpful tips regarding vanilla beans so hopefully we'll have it down by next week.

In the meantime, since it's been a busy week with Tony away in Mississippi until yesterday, we decided we'd repeat the flavours we did last week - with a couple of major differences:
1. no peeling of the ginger. it's a gargantuan task when it's 10lbs of ginger root
2. no peeling of cucumber - we've been curious whether the skin on the cucumber will add more foam to the soda, and if there will be a noticeable change in taste.

And there was a serious earthquake in Qinghai province, in western China 3 days ago. It's a very remote, mountainous and poor region of China, and while the scope of the damage was nowhere near close to the huge one that rocked Sichuan province in 2008, this nonetheless has affected a population of people that is still in relief supplies and aid, with the death toll over 1000 as of today.

10% of sales on Saturday will be donated to the earthquake relief effort. I'm still deciding which organization to give money to, but it will probably be Red Cross or Mercy Corps.  Google has a very convenient link to relief organizations working in the area if you wish to contribute.

Cream Soda attempt!

Things have started to get busy here at the headquarters of Brooklyn Soda Works (meaning the kitchen of the apartment). We're gearing up for our debut at the Brooklyn Flea in 9 days, trying to work out last minute technical glitches and ordering the last of our supplies, as well as trying to determine our starting lineup for flavors!

However that doesn't mean we haven't stopped working on new flavors and trying out new ingredients. I attempted a cream soda the other night. I have very fond memories of downing Schweppes cream sodas during summers in Hong Kong.  The history of cream soda and its different variations across the globe can be read here.  The main ingredient is vanilla, so I boiled up 2 vanilla beans for 45 minutes in 1L of water, let it cool, then added zest of half a lemon and 1tsp of lemon juice (for acidity).
The result!

It was a tad too lemony even with only 1 teaspoon of lemon juice, but wonderfully refreshing nonetheless with a great vanilla aroma that I admit was not present in my beloved Schweppes cream sodas of my childhood.