How the world cools off

culinary cultures — By Bob Riel on June 22, 2006 at 7:52 am

How do you cool off on a hot summer day? What refreshing drink do you reach for? According to this entertaining story in the NY Times, your drink of choice may very well depend on “who you are and where you’re from.”

“What quenches your thirst depends on who you are,” said Dr. Barbara Rolls of Pennsylvania State University, an expert on the mechanics of drinking. Temperature, variety, color and childhood experiences can affect what people reach for when they are thirsty, she said.

“At my school the Chinese kids go for bubble tea after school, the Puerto Ricans get batidos and the other Latin girls like the helados from the street cart,” said Shirley Wong, an eighth grader at a parochial school in Chinatown.

For some, it may be as simple as a young coconut from a Chinatown street vendor, peeled and pierced to give up the fragrant, lightly sweet juice inside. After Friday prayers at the Masjid Aqsa, a mosque in Harlem, vendors set up shop outside. The West Africans who pour out refresh themselves with strong ginger beer and a sweet yogurt that comes from Africa’s tradition of cooling, nourishing fermented milk drinks.

Coolers may be fruity, sweet, salty or sour; thinned with lemon juice or thick with avocado; soothing with milk or jittery with caffeine, which generates cooling sweat.