Hello lovely readers!

Welcome to The Vegetarian Ginger’s official 200th post. Along with it is coming a brand new recipe and my first ever cookbook giveaway! I know the past few months have been a little slower than usual, but I haven’t forgotten about you. I have a ton of recipe ideas, some product reviews, and lots more content coming soon. In the meantime, I’m hoping one lucky person can enjoy this awesome cookbook and keep on sending me recipes of your own!

I originally published this recipe on the CBC website, but thought it would be appropriate with sugar-loaded Halloween time fast approaching. Homemade soda is easy, healthy and fun to make. If you’re expecting it to taste like a can of orange pop, you’re going to be in for a shock. This syrup doesn’t have corn bi-products and buckets of sugar (plus the colour is maybe less neon), so the flavour does change.

Homemade Orange Soda

Ingredients

• 4 large oranges, to zest and juice
• 1 large lime, to zest
• 3/4 cup granulated sugar
• 1/4 cup honey or agave nectar
• 1 bottle of sparkling water
• 4 citrus wedges, for garnish

Method

Zest the oranges and lime thoroughly. Put the contents in a large pot. Pour the sugar and honey over the zest and stir.

Proceed to juice the oranges, either using a juicer or your hands, until you have about two cups of liquid. If you’re short of two cups use water to fill in the remaining amount. Bring the pot to a boil, then reduce the heat and simmer for 10 minutes until your mixture has noticeably lessened. Remove from heat and allow the mix to cool for roughly five minutes, stirring occasionally to help the process. Strain out all of the zest by using a fine sieve, adding the remaining syrup to a Mason jar with a tight lid. Discard the strained zest.

Cool the mixture in the fridge for two hours.

Once your syrup has chilled, it’s ready to be mixed with sparkling water. Use a general ratio of a quarter cup syrup for every cup of sparkling water. Serve this up in a pitcher full of ice and citrus slices, or serve in individual glasses at parties or for kids.

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Click here to enter GIVEAWAY

Big thank you to Natasha Tsakiris at Fitzhenry & Whiteside for providing the cookbook for this giveaway. Flex Appeal is perfectly suited for my readers (you!) because it features recipes for vegetarians living amongst meat eaters. I decided to host my giveaway through a 3rd party site to make everything fair & unbiased. It’s easy:

• Comment on this post for one entry
• Follow @RonnieSheppard on Twitter for an extra optional entry
• Visit The Vegetarian Ginger on Facebook for an extra optional entry

 

Thanks to everyone who has followed my cooking adventures so far, and I am suuuuper excited for the next 200.

Happy eating,

Veronica