Saturday, December 26, 2009

Dr. Pepper

Our travels took us through many worldly cities! Athens, Palestine, London, Marathon and even Dublin!

Dublin is the home of the world famous Dr. Pepper.

We don't typically drink soda. High fructose corn syrup is our enemy.

However, it seemed only right to pop into the Dr. Pepper factory and museum to buy the kids a locally-owned and produced soda pop!

8 oz little glass bottles house a soda with an amazingly short ingredient list, for a soda pop. that is. If you grew up where I grew up you would call it a Coke. Even if it were Dr. Pepper. The Dublin-made Dr. Pepper is made with Imperial cane sugar, grown in Texas.

Dr Pepper isn't exactly healthy, but it made for a very fun treat. The kids agreed that it was the best Coke they had ever consumed!

When we reached Ft Worth, I continued the locally grown junk food theme. We bought Mrs. Baird's fried pies at a gas station. We knew the Bairds from our church days in Ft Worth. The grandmother, Mrs. Ninnie Baird, started baking bread to sell in her woodstove oven in 1911. Her children delivered the breads and pies on foot. Little by little her business grew and now Mrs. Bairds is a huge company. Philip reminded me that the family sold the company in the 90's, so when we bought those fried pies, it wasn't really locally owned by the family anymore. Oh well. When we got the Mrs. Bairds fried pies, I told the kids about how Mr and Mrs. Baird gave Philip and me valuable marriage counseling via a program at our church, and how much they blessed us and prayed for us, and how they gave more than they received. It felt local!

And it was food with a story. Which is very valuable.

In Fort Worth we drove around and saw our old homes. Shared memories. Wondered why the owners of our old home cut down the wonderful mulberry that gave the kids so much delight. Maybe they didn't appreciate the messy fruit that delighted little children and many little birds.

2 comments:

CountryDew said...

Local folklore has Dr. Pepper being named after a Christiansburg Dr. Pepper, if the drink wasn't actually created there. Also the Roanoke area sells more Dr. Pepper than any place else.

Jeff said...

I bought my present place 10 years ago - it is heavily (and naturally) wooded. I probably planted 100 trees at my old place, which was just a little lot. I went by it some years after I sold it and saw that every last tree had been cut down. I've never gone back again. I don't understand people who don't like trees.