My Home-Made Ginger Ale

I would like to set the record straight about my home-made ginger ale and lemon-lime "soft drinks."

I've offered these recently to friends and they've politely refused, saying they don't drink sugared drinks. Great, they got plain soda water, made from my filtered-water put through the sodastream machine. That's about as home made as you can get.

I make my own ginger "syrup" and lemon-lime "syrup" to flavour the home-made soda water for one reason only: to control the amount of sugar.

I don't know the exact number of tablespoonfuls of sugar that are in each serving of commercial soft drinks, but I know it's a LOT.

Here is mine, for all the world to see. I'll do the ginger "syrup," and then maybe you'll understand why I'm putting quotation marks around the word "syrup."

I used one fair sized ginger root. I peel the ginger root, cut it into small portions and press them through my garlic press. I add 2 cups water.

And one-quarter of a cup of sugar.

I bring it to a boil and simmer it long enough for the water to reduce to one-and-a-half cups. Then I strain it and pour it into a container which I keep in the refrigerator.

Are you with me? I have 1.5 cups of liquid here, and dissolved in that is 1/4 cup of sugar.

To make a ten-ounce glass of ginger ale, I put a HALF TEASPOON of the ginger syrup in the bottom of the glass, and top up with soda water. And ice, if the patron wants it.

A HALF TEASPOON.

I don't actually know how many half-teaspoons are in one-and-a-half-cups of liquid, but it's NOT MUCH.

So really, when I offer you a glass of home-made ginger ale, you can drink it. You've eaten more sugar than that from your diet bar this morning. You get more sugar than that from your vegan protein powder. You get more sugar than that from your bran muffin.

Believe me, you can drink my ginger ale!