Boston Cooler, Ginger Smoothie & Waxed Ginger Beer

For the last few weeks, much of the USA has been enduring extremely high temperatures. I've just been reading that the temperature in Detroit has ranged from 36°C to 39°C and that an ideal way of staying cool is to drink a Boston cooler. No, I don't know what one is either but according to Wikipedia it is a mixture of vanilla ice cream and Vernors Ginger Ale. Despite the name, the drink was invented in Detroit and was known as far back as the 1880s. Have a go yourself with whatever you can lay your hands on (ginger ale, ginger beer, ginger wine etc) and let me know the result.

Last year, Q Drinks, the New York-based maker of natural sodas, launched a ginger ale called Q Ginger. I'm sure that our Spanish readers will be pleased to learn that the ginger ale is now available in Spain, according to Alimarket (and if my Google translation is correct).

I'm always interested to see how far north the Americans will attempt to grow ginger. The Enterprise, from Brockton in Massachusetts, mentions that Marta MacFarland is experimenting with ginger at her organic Rise and Shine Farm in the nearby town of Marshfield. I shall try to find out how the experiment is progressing.

Wales Online reported that the incessant rain which has fallen on the UK for what seems like months and months and months failed to deter visitors to the Cardiff International Food and Drink Festival 2012. One stall holder pleased with the event was Roger Schmid of the Septimus Spyder Medieval Brewhouse from Burton-on-Trent who sold a range of soft drinks including his ginger beer. Interestingly, the company produce a ginger beer, a ginger beer special reserve and a sloe ginger beer in waxed bottles, and a ginger beer special reserve in a stoneware crock.

Fastmoving introduced me to a type of product which I never knew existed - ginger beer smoothie. Wild Island (a South African brand from the Ceres Beverage Company) makes a range of dairy fruit mix smoothies and it has just added Ginger Beer Smoothie. Sounds interesting.

The Centre for Rural Technology in Nepal has published some images of ginger drying in the sun. I've also found some great images of ginger in Jyoti Pathak's Taste of Nepal blog.

Still in Nepal and the Himalayan Times has reported on some good news for Nepali ginger farmers. Ginger exports for the first ten months of the current fiscal year (mid May) have reached Rs 323.2 million compared to RS 199.4 million for the same period in the last fiscal year. But the latest figure must be put into perspective as the export value for the year before (2009-10) was RS 302.6 million. The implication is that last year must be treated as an unfortunate blip caused , I believe, by a better than expected harvest in India, Nepal's principal export market.

I shall finish by introducing Mauritius, a relatively small member of the ginger producing community. A year ago the Minister of Agro Industry and Food Security warned that 70 percent of the products consumed by Mauritians are imported and that is a risky situation to be in. The country is now just over halfway through a seven year plan to increase annual ginger production from 1300 tonnes to 2500 tonnes. Last year's interim production target aimed to meet 80 percent of local consumption. The increase in production has been made possible by the micropropagation of imported ginger material. I must remember to come back to this in 2015 to see if the plan has been achieved.