This goes together fast and disappears even faster. The spicy brown soft drink, first created by a Philadelphia pharmacist in the back room of his drug store, is also becoming hip and trendy. She suggests starting out by making a gallon of the caffeine-free soda. Larry Dworsky of Wine Hobby USA Delaware, Stanton, Del., says customers often make root beer in the autumn. Those tiny oranges you're seeing in the two-pound gift crates in the produce section now are the sweet little clementines I always look forward to every November.
Clementines are actually the smallest of mandarin oranges imported from Spain and Morocco.
The cool nights, hot days and dry weather of eastern Spain near the Gulf of Valencia make perfect growing conditions for clementines, sweet mandarinlike seedless fruit about the size of a billiard ball, with a skin that can be zipped open in seconds. Their new Cookie Stix, elongated cookies that come in chocolate chip, peanut butter and butter flavors, are designed to fit kids' small hands, but they're also perfect for dipping into coffee or hot chocolate. If Cyndi Thomson can't get her kids to eat more fruits and vegetables, no one can. She's a registered dietitian and co-director of the Women's Healthy Eating and Living Study in Tucson, which is exploring the role fruits and vegetables play in disease prevention. It's the timing that's tricky.