The recipe is using citric acid, instead. The tastes are slightly different, but citric acid is easier to get.

But did you know the fingernails were clipped perfectly? What a delight to see in these photos.

Fun fact - erythroxylum vaccinifolium makes for a potent aphrodisiac.

I heavily carbonate my water from a soda steam and find that the carbonation alone makes the water taste sweet enough to skip any additional sweeteners. I refill the co2 bottles myself to keep it less expensive.

Right? In the summer, there's two things I drink. Cold water overnight infused with whatever (lemon, cucumber, mint, etc) and carbonated water from the store. Both are cheap to make and pleasant when it is hot. Neither has added sugar. You can also infuse with fruits like strawberries. In the other parts of the year (esp. winter) I make a can of tea (nearly 1,5l) with two teabags. One cup of tea is about 0,2l so it will last the whole day, and it stays hot for 24h. Make in morning and you got whole day together (we are two drinking this). Sometimes goes to waste cause of being away, too hot weather. There's a lot of good fusion brands available (I like Yogi Tea's blends a lot), you can also make your own herbal mix. Just be careful with some herbs and medication.

The carbonated water and lemon in water make for an acidic liquid. This is nice when it is hot, but it is also bad for teeth. So I do try to limit these somewhat, never drink it right before brushing, brush 2x a week, and floss with those special toothpicks. I also drink the acidic stuff with the main meal in evening when the teeth already get a blast from the meal, regularly at least.

As a former wine drinker (who can also appreciate special beers and heavy liquor) I was not able to stick to one beer on friday evening, and I recognized the struggle to battle an addiction, being an alcoholic in disguise. I've been sober past years, approx 4, apart from an occasional mistake due to alcohol in a desert or an intentional tiramisu during Christmas.

I also still drink coffee, but with caffeine not so much. Mainly in morning/afternoon. As a kid I was a fan of cola, the coca cola one (for some reason never liked other ones like Aldi's or Pepsi much; there's a lot of choice these days). Club Mate is a bit hard to source and the pfand is annoying (justified, but...) to send back from NL. But I been able to quit that in puberty. So, while I like cheap/bulk, I am not sure what I could gain from DIY soda (the carbonated water is cheap and we get the groceries at the doorstep, also useful since we don't have a car).

A easy solution might be to mix the concentrate with sparkling/carbonated water?

I made Open Cola once, and hooked it up to CO2 canisters and a beer tap (the other tap had home made beer). It's certainly better than mixing with soda water or using a SodaStream.

> aspartame (yeah yeah not proven to cause cancer, but still not a great sweetener)

Compared to what? Aspartame is almost certainly the most studied artificial sweetener in existence, and the safety profile looks very good.