rogue
/roʊg/[rohg]: adjective: no longer obedient, belonging, or accepted and hence not controllable or answerable; deviating, renegade: a rogue cop; a rogue union local, a rogue soda stream.
It started so simply.
It was the answer to most questions the universe threw forth.
How do I stop turning to pink wine as my default beverage?
How do I stop my hands being slashed with the with criss cross indents of heavy bags when lugging bottles of sparkling water home from the shops?
(NB The Hungry One has a thing for sparkling water. When he comes home one of his He Man style exercise regimes he’s known to slug back about two litres after they’ve been tainted with the sticky medicinal note of Ribena.)
How do I feel less self conscious about the environmental footprint of all those empty bottles?
And back then, the real question that got answered by this gleaming piece of 1980’s nostalgia reworked- what do I get The Hungry One for Christmas?
When the resulting Soda Stream was opened on Christmas morning it was greeted with genuine glee.
“The magic of carbonation at my fingertips!” (This is a verbatim quote).
It has since become the gadget of choice in 2010.
Screw, push, push, zushhh. Then prepare for bubble-licious beverage fun.
There’s a good chance that us finding the joys of at home carbonation this exciting (even- bloggable??) makes us a little lame, but at this stage of my life, I think I’m ok with that.
The Soda Stream has brought great things in its wake.
Since it was unwrapped I’ve been drinking a little less plonk. I’ve also been doing a little more yoga.
Together we’ve had some great times. We’ve also learned some lessons along the way.
Don’t put the bottles in the dishwasher; they’ll pucker and distend like a belly after birth.
Don’t push the button more than it wants to go. When it starts to sound a little shrill you’ve carbonated to the max. Any more compression and it’s going to explode over you, and not in a good way.
Do have a spare carbonation cylinder on hand. It’s really sad when it runs out.
Don’t carbonate drinks with sugars already in the mixture. This is important. This includes wine.
This is the point where things started to get a little rogue.
About a month ago there may have been a dinner at ours that involved a spanish fiesta style feast; garlic prawns made in the special pots on the wood fire, baby meatballs with smoked paprika and chickpeas, tomato bread, goats cheese with rosemary, honey and pear. Some of our special friends may have even brought the makings for Sangria; red wine, lemonade and a kooky collection of fruits.
It was a long weekend. It was Saturday night. There’s a reason I didn’t blog the feast. There are no photos of publishable quality past 7pm and my memory is a little frayed.
After the prawns; after the meatballs, but before the blood orange bread and butter pudding, things started to get a little loose.
At some point someone made the suggestion of white wine sangria.
Bottles of dusty verdelho left dwindling in the no mans land of the wine rack were quick chilled and transferred into waiting Soda Stream bottles.
One, two, three, four; went the thudden pumpings by someone who had had way too many glasses of something.
A chain reaction started; one that was neither obedient,accepted and hence not controllable or answerable to anyone.
A fizzing torrent of verdhelo cascaded all down our bookshelves, seeping into the pores of all my poor Margaret Fulton cookbooks. I could feel a look of sticky reproach from beneath the covers.
But, it must be said- add to the remnants of that fizzy passionfruity wine a jar of lychees, some mint and some ice and it makes a darn good white sangria.
In the aftermath there may have been quite a bit of disruption; to the bookshelves, our reserves of verdelho and to my dreams of a productive day after.
But out of that chaos we made a breakthrough.
A whole new universe opened up that had nothing to do with measuring out capfuls of sticky flavourings in lurid colours.
What if we carbonated things that had flavour- but no sugar?
Like- iced tea?
In the month past we’ve given brown rice tea, black chai, peppermint and jasmine all a burl.
It’s fizzy and refreshing and I feel so nauseatingly earnest while I’m sipping it and silently gloating over the fact that there’s no sugar that I want to kick myself.
Since then The Hungry One has been tinkering with going half-rogue.
It’s a delicate balance, but if anyone can do it it’s him.
It seems that subtly infusing the iced tea with fruit, prior to carbonation, just works.
You have to keep a close eye on the bottle and a delicate hand to prevent a torrent of rogue fizzing. On the plus side you also get subtle tweaks of fructose and a twinkling of flavour with your tannins.
He really is getting busy with his fizzy.
It’s chaos that’s been controlled.
Just the way we like it.
The Hungry One’s sparkling tea infusions:
Brown rice green tea, with lychees
Black chai with apricot
Jasmine with mango
Peppermint with pineapple
Earl Grey with morello cherries
Lady Grey with pear.
love your work, just bought one myself and will have to push the limits of wine spritzers me thinks! 😛