Cold and fizzy

Just before the tornadoes struck, we had a week of humid, sweat-soaked heat western Massachusetts.  Then came the twisters.  They broke the heat in the course of their rapid, destructive passage, and we were grateful, at least, for that.

Cool relief was the theme, albeit in a superficial way, in the mailbox too.  As I noted in the NPR summer roundup, June brought few cocktail books or ice cream recipes of the sort we usually see this time of year.  Instead, along came an unexpected pair:  sodas and ice pops.

Paletas are Mexican ice pops, in startling flavors: spiced tomato-tequila, avocado, apricot-chamomile.  There’s shaved ice and agua fresca–the fastest way I know of to eat a watermelon–too.

And then there’s homemade soda.  It’s the logical product, I suppose, of three different factors: DIY food (home preserving and canning), the season for summer refreshers, and thebacklash against carb-laden sugary drinks.

There are days in midsummer when a frozen, liquid diet seems like all you really want or need. It’s not difficult to find a spot of respite and recovery in something distracting, something cool.  If only it were so easy to rebuild the lives and livelihoods of our storm-tossed community…