hi everyone. today for your edification and amusement i'll be drinking abali yogurt soda from the mediterranean grocery store on park ave.
full disclosure: i do have some limited experience in the realm of yogurt-based bottled drinks. on our first visit to the aforementioned grocery emporium i snagged a bottle of "dana" brand yogurt drink, thinking (wrongly) that it would be sweet, kind of thick and delicious like that lassi stuff you can get at indian restaurants. i was wrong. WHOA was i wrong. it was yogurt based, to be sure, and it was in a bottle, that part you could not deny, but all of my other assumptions about it were wrong. over the course of an interminable afternoon i consumed (well my wife and i) an entire bottle of thin, salty, white liquid that literally made your mouth cringe when you poured it in there. if it had not been for the extremely sweet caramels we also bought, it would have been nigh on undrinkable. so when i was out stocking up for this taste test i wanted to share the experience with you all but it seemed somehow disingenuous to pretend to "test" something that i'd already consumed before (and knew to be awful, truly truly awful) so i opted for the other bottled yogurt drink that they sell. also i don't think i could have willingly consumed the dana twice, knowing what i was in for, so i had to pick something new.
i don't know if the above picture does it justice, but i feel it necessary to point out that this shit is actually separated in the bottle (see the sediment on the bottom and the liquid on the top?) so it's going to require a bit of violent shaking on my part before it's even mixed together enough to consume. not to be confused, of course, with the violent shaking that my body will probably engage in immediately AFTER consumption, as it tries to withstand the onslaught upon my taste buds that will undoubtedly be abali yogurt soda.
okay have i built it up enough? let's do this.
i can't do it. i can't! i just looked at the ingredients on the side. this is what it says:
milk
carbonated water
yogurt culture
salt
that's it. what have i done? oh, hubris, do you know no limits? why must icarus eternally fly to the sun? why must sisyphus push his rock up the hill, again and again, forever more?
take heart, my good man. think of the words of Mallory, when asked why anyone in their right mind would want to climb Mount Everest. do you know what he said?
"Because it's there."
AGH! AAAAGH AAAAAAAA!!! THERE WERE CHUNKS!!! CHUNKS IN IT!!!!! CHUUUUUUNNNNNKKKKKSSSSSS!!!!!
i feel like i just drank somebody's puke. god. oh god and jesus and dear god and little baby jesus god. it's... awful. i cannot seriously fathom why someone would drink this. it's... it basically tastes like someone strained a huge block of feta cheese through an old gym sock into a big pile of salt, poured it into a bottle of sparkling water, and put some half and half in it. oh. ugh. words fail me, they honestly do, and i still have well over half the bottle left. god. i was kind of hoping that all my hemming and hawing would make it seem way worse than it would actually turn out to be but i was wrong - it's as bad as i thought it would be. all right. all right, pull yourself together here, big guy. come on, you can do it. who's mommy's little tough guy? who's my big man? you are. that's right, you are.
oh lord. more chunks. i guess i should have shaken it up some more. man. i honestly don't know if i can keep this down. who would drink this? call me a xenophobe but i really cannot picture anyone sitting around just casually sipping off a bottle of this stuff. maybe this is the big stupid american showing off his spoiled, sugar-saturated taste buds but i really find this stuff to be awful. it's just salty fizzy milky water. it's like if you put alka seltzer in skim milk. basically.
i just gave some to my wife and she slapped me on the shoulder for not warning her about how nasty it was going to be. couldn't you tell just by looking at it, woman?
all right let's finish this beast off.
uuunnnnnggggghhhhhh. uuuuuuuuuuuuuuhhhhhhhhh. uh.
ungh.
uuuuuuuuuuuhhhhhhhhhhnnnnnnnnnngggggggggghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.
u
