Treats Sweet & Sauer

I'm not a big soda drinker. I got out of the miniscule habit I did have last year, when I was trying to lose weight. However, I sometimes have a hankering for a Sarsaparilla from Kutztown Soda Works and last week it was really bad.
So bad, in fact, that I bought two bottles of Sarsaparilla and a tub of vanilla ice cream and after dinner made a float. And the next day, I made another float. And the day after that....well, you get the picture.

Kutztown makes great sodas. They also do root beer, birch beer, red cream, black cherry, and a few others I can't remember right now. They are not caffinated, and they only use cane sugar as a sweetener. And their descriptions always have some bit of interesting Pennsylvania Dutch lingo, as seen above. Kutztown sodas aren't carried many places, but the grocery store in the town where I work has most of them. Thank god. (You can buy online, too!*)

(*I just noticed something I must have: they have a tshirt that has the logo on the front and on the back says "Got Sass?" That is so going to be mine.)

Continuing on with the Pennsylvania Dutch theme, I recently tried my hand at making good, old fashioned sauerkraut. It seemed easy, right?

This is a picture of the first batch, which looks infinitly better in this picture than it did when I pitched it in the compost bin a week or so later. It had gotten a milky look to it and had started to brown and dry at the top. Not enough water, it was grocery store cabbage and was very dry.
I started a second batch with 2 farmer market cabbages and 2-weeks in it looks and smells much better, and tastes great. I hope to do this with my own cabbage eventually.