Hitting the Bottle, Moen Style

The Moen household is currently enduring a painful season in life. Our grocery store is remodeling. 

Prayers would be appreciated.

Maybe to some of you flippant, fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants types, this doesn't sound so tragic, but let me assure you, you're wrong. It's bad. It's very, very bad. 

Things are not where they should be - where they've always been! The very world is turned on its axis. Have you tried grocery shopping when the world is turned on its axis? It's very tilty and sloppy and slidy. Trust me. 

But being the stalwart stiff upper-lippers we are, we have managed to persevere with just the minimum of belly aching. In fact, we have even found a small glimmer of hope in our otherwise gloomy pit of despair. 

Look what can now be found on our store shelves...

Saspa--

Sarspa--

Sarsaparilla!!

Now, this may not be big news to you, but I have very fond memories of riding my old hand-me-down bike (the only kind there is when you're the youngest of six) for miles on shoulderless rural roads to the Macleay Country Store to get bottles of this sweet Sioux City nectar of the gods and some packs of Black Jack Gum. 

There was just something so taboo about those brown glass beer bottles that appealed to the kid in me as a general line toer, even though I don't think they really fooled anyone into believing that I was knocking back actual brewskies on the front steps of the establishment. I still felt like a rebel, and that's all that mattered to my 12-year-old self.

When my similarly-aged son saw the bottles, he was immediately drawn to them, too. I couldn't resist buying a few, just for old time's sake.

But unlike old times, there were several other brands and flavors of root beers to try. I was intrigued by AJ Stephan's Jamaican-style Ginger Beer.

My son's take on it, "It tastes like soap," together with this reviewer's, "It tastes like burning," and I think 'burning soap' pretty much sums up the taste experience that is AJ Stephan's Jamaican-style Ginger Beer. I can, however, attest that it makes an excellent chicken and rice marinade. 

The ginger beer, not burning soap. I'm not that much of a gourmet.

But even though AJ done me so, so wrong, I am still a sucker for the nostalgia of the glass soda bottles of all kinds. 

"Cherry Coke" by April Moen. Click the image for fine art print options.

How about you? What makes you nostalgic for your younger days?