Love the shape of the pitcher - does it have a stopper? I would put honey in it instead of syrup, however, but whatever you use most would be appropriate. It looks small enough to use as a cream pitcher also. Anyway, I love special serving items like that. I've never seen stemless wine glasses. Like David, I need to replace a few myself! I watch Mark Bittman fairly often, and while I don't like his personality, his recipes do sound good - generally fairly quick and fairly easy while also including interesting combinations of ingredients. I think I would like his cookbook much more than his show!! He spends a lot of time in Spain, and I love Spanish food. Lars

I don't have many options for diet ginger ale but I've always liked ginger ale and when I wanted to avoid sugar, I'd buy diet and I was fine with it. I'm not all that fussy when it comes to soft drinks. I did like the flavored carbonated waters but there to FAS set in and it has to have sugar and sweeteners in it. Good grief can't these people even drink WATER without sugar and salt in it??? Crystal lite has such a metallic taste that I can't drink it very often. I'll take Kool Aid over it. I do drink a lot of the green tea from Aldi which is fine for the price though I don't really need the extra stuff in there. I prefer things less sweetened than the FAS folks require these days. Trying to find unsweetened tea is difficult. I like a lot of lemon (preferably lime if there were a choice) but keep the sweeteners out of there. I usually choose what they call "diet" soft drinks when I have to drink them, and if given a choice. I used to prefer Bubble-Up to 7Up but don't see it anymore. I like Diet Dr. Pepper, Diet Root Beer, well for the most part any diet drink is drinkable to me though still over-sweetened in my book. Occasionally I do savor a "real" root beer or cream soda. Not too often though. Water is still a beverage of choice around here. Spring water when I have the choice. Oh and once in a great while, even Tang! It's what the astronauts used to drink... :)

I don't care for plain water unless I'm really thirsty, so I drink lemon water instead--just a few drops added from the bottled lemon juice. In cold weather, I warm it in the MW, whatever the time of day. My sister mentioned that acidic drinks, including fruit juices, are hard on tooth enamel, so I don't sip--I usually try to drink it down. She has several co-workers who will only drink, coffee, tea, soft drinks, and juice through straws. My teeth are sensitive to cold, another reason I prefer the warm water.

That doesn't look like edible ginger. That looks like pine cone ginger (shampoo ginger or bitter ginger). Edible ginger like you find in the grocery store has very long, thin leaves and very small, white flowers that aren't very showy. Let the flowers grow. They're really beautiful when they turn red, plus, you can shampoo your hair with them. I've done that a couple of times when I was out of shampoo. Works great and makes your hair really soft. You can also eat the roots of these, but they don't taste like the ginger root you buy in the store. You have to dry them and pound them into powder to use the roots, and it's not used much for cooking, mostly medicianlly . If you want some kitchen ginger (Zingiber officinale) just buy a couple of pieces and plant it just barely covered (about 1/2 inch of soil), and you should have some soon. You can also grow it in pots. Zingiber zerumbet (shampoo ginger) Zingiber officinale (kitchen ginger)