The Sodastream

A couple weeks ago Dianne and I were visiting Rookwood Commons to get some frozen yogurt at Yagööt – a favorite for Dianne. We were there during the day and decided to take a walk around the commons. One of my favorite stores to visit there is Sur La Table, a cooking store. We stopped in to look around and one item caught my eye. The sodastream (shown at right) is a unit that lets you carbonate your own water. I was drinking a lot of diet soda and the cans were piling up in our recycle bin. I also like sparkling water (San Pellegrino is my favorite), so the unit seemed like a great idea. Dianne knew it was over as soon as I saw it. It took me a couple minutes, but I made the impulse buy and picked up some diet root beer flavoring and fruit essence flavors.

It was one of the best impulse buys I’ve made in a long time! I use chilled, filtered water from our Brita pitcher to fill the bottles. Using near ice cold water makes the carbonation process more effective. You connect a bottle to the unit and open the carbon dioxide valve in short bursts until the release value kicks in at least three times. Remove the bottle and cap it until you use it. It only takes a minute! I usually keep one of the bottles as plain sparkling water and add some flavor to the other bottle. The diet root beer flavoring is pretty good and the fruits are good too, although adding a couple drops of lemon juice or lime juice (or both) works just fine too!

If you like sparkling water, I highly recommend the sodastream unit!