Kosher for My Mouth All the Time

I know what you're thinking. You're thinking "That's not nearly enough Coke!" And you're right. It isn't. I bought more after the photo was taken. Now, I don't normally like 2-Liters for my Coca-Cola fix. In order of preference it is: glass bottle, can, then plastic. Fountain cokes are always hit-or-miss depending on the syrup to soda water ratio of the individual machine. I will almost always opt for a packaged Coke rather than a fountain Coke. So, if I don't prefer 2-Liter, why are there 6 of them in the photo?

Take a close look. See the yellow tops on those bottles? That means this Coke is Kosher. That means it's made closer to the original recipe with sugar instead of high fructose corn syrup. You may claim that means nothing, but I, friend, am a Coke connoisseur and you'll have to believe me when I say that this Coke tastes like childhood, like summer at the beach, like wonder. I truly can taste a difference. You can even see a difference because this Coke is much more initially fizzy that regular Coke. It looses that fizz faster and has a much smaller carbonation bubble than HFCS Coke. It dances in my mouth! You heard me. It dances.

I hope Coca-Cola will take a cue from arch-rival Pepsi and make a sugar-sweetened soda for a longer time frame than just for Passover. Pepsi is putting out "Throwback" editions of regular Pepsi and Mountain Dew for a few months and is also trying out an all-natural version of Pepsi in the UK called "Pepsi Raw". I'd certainly be willing to try an all-natural Coke. How about you?

Piggles

These are my new little friends. The cream and white one is named Evil Pockets and the all brown guy is Captive. Evil Pockets is properly named "Malbolge", but I've taken to calling him E.P. They are both male adolescent guinea pigs.

I really, really wanted to adopt them, but none of the local shelters had any and the pig-specific rescues in Illinois like The Critter Corral are too suburban for me to get to without transport. I checked on Craigslist for a solid 2 weeks as well, with no luck. I broke down a couple of weeks ago and just went to an Evil Corporate Pet Store. I know it's evil, okay, and I'm sorry.

My favorite thing is watching them eat. It's the absolute cutest. They're favorite foods right now are apple and red bell pepper. My Flickr stream is probably going to be over-run with pig photos. So far, they still run away into their box houses whenever anyone goes to look into the cage, but we are making progress. It is possible to pet them without having to chase them around every time. I take them out for "floor time" for at least an hour each day. We still haven't tried to introduce the cats to them. I'm just not sure how cruel it would be to either party to experience.

Grandma Club: Cocoa and Marshmallows

A couple of weekends ago, Kathy, Noel and I got together for making hot cocoa mixes and flavored marshmallows. You can read all about it on the official Grandma Club blog and see all about it at the Grandma Club flickr page. I had a good time, obviously. I had put the entire spatula full of marshmallow into my mouth in that photo. In it, I'm thinking, "Maybe I shouldn't have eaten all that, but it's soooooooo good." I've tried the mint cocoa and the traditional. Both are tasty and the traditional has a real kick to it with the cayenne. I made the mint with milk, but used water for the traditional and it seemed fine; maybe a touch under-sweetened, but that was nothing a couple of Noel's vanilla marshmallows couldn't fix.