verdict on the pine-needle soda: buenísmo!

[asakiyume]

The concoction really came into its own a couple of days after my post (which was on February 2)! I drank the last of it yesterday--good and tingly, soda-rific with bubbles and all, and a good fragrance and flavor of pine. I definitely intend to make it again!

Comments

[anna_wing]

Congratulations! I remember reading about pine-needle soup in Tove Janssen's Moomin books, and being somewhat sceptical, but if pine-needle soda is possible, pine-needle tea should be too. And the internet says that it is, with appropriate warnings to avoid some pine lookalikes, like yew...

[asakiyume]

Exactly; otherwise you will poison yourself, and that would be sad.

Also, I don't know how the body would do with the actual pine needles themselves... I found myself thinking about murder mysteries where someone kills someone by feeding them chopped-up porcupine quills, which then destroy their digestive tract. I guess pine needles are softer than that--but not super soft? So using them as a flavor strikes me as safer than using them as a food in themselves. Although if people around the world have a history of eating them, then it must be safe--provided, as you say, you get edible pines and not an evergreen like yew.

[yamamanama]

Porcupine quills are keratin so I'm not sure what would actually happen if you ate chopped up qulls.

[asakiyume]

Yeah, come to think of it, I'm not sure where I got the notion that they were deadly...