Cabana - 2 Reviews

Oh the spices of the island. Depending on what island you are talking about could really have a strong affect on the drink. If I were to drink Jamaican spiced lemonade it might be a ginger jerk lemonade. I don't know how I would feel about it. Indian, although not an island, spiced would be a masala or curry lemonade that makes we want to ralph all over the place. A Puerto Rico island spice would be what...Adobo? That would be bad, too.

This island, although never discussed by name, is home to I guess a little bit of cinnamon because that's all I'm getting here. It's a good lemonade, don't get me wrong, but in terms of having a different title pointing to some mystery island and just barely if at all changing your recipe, that's kind of a waste of time. If this was just "Cabana Lemonade" I would say, "Oh, this is pretty good lemonade and it has a hint of cinnamon which puts it over the top." If you are going to call it "island spice" and not put enough to push it over the edge, well you missed the point all together.

I'm not trying to be a greedy child, but I want more spice! More spicy! Spicier! More trips to the island. I mean, come on. Who is complaining about trips to the island? Go get more spices and send me a new batch.

I've had enough of the winter and I don't think it's even halfway done. We haven't even had that much snow, but the cold has kept me indoors and everything is grey and it's just killing me. What I'm going to do is get myself a white noise machine that is just the sounds of the ocean; you know waves, birds, an occasional foghorn an of course the soothing sounds of pirates. With those noises gracing my ears, I will jack up the heat in my house as high as it will go, set up some photo shoot lamps facing me, dump a few pounds of sand on my floor and sit in a lawn chair. I will then close my eyes and dream that I am sitting in the doorway of my oceanside cabana. I'm there just thinking about it. Since I'm pretending I'm in the blazing sun I should really be drinking lemonade. Since I am going to be in a mind cabana then this is the lemonade I will choose. In addition to having an appropriate name, this drink is summer in a bottle. It's made from real lemon juice and that gives it a nice homemade taste. The strawberry flavor falls under “natural flavors” on the ingredients list, but it is enough to taste like someone smashed a couple of berries into a glass of chilled lemon bliss. The real kicker in this is that Cabana uses both cane sugar and stevia, so the sugar content is less than one would expect. Somehow they worked it out so that you can't taste the stevia at all. I didn't even realize it was there until I checked to see how much sugar was in here and I got a pleasant surprise.

This experiment will also hopefully lead to a pleasant surprise, when my cats hopefully don't decided that the living room is now one big litter box. I need the sun and warmth in my life, not a house full of cat turds.