If I just went on Jill Cox’ description of the Kalahari, I’d think wood, some sort of tree, or a forest-y area had inspired the drink.
Nope. Google it. K-a-l-a-h-a-r-i. And never mind the water park resort chain.
Search engine highlights for “prune juice” and “milk” amounted to little more than a home health treatment for babies, two recipes sourced from books published in the 1930s and 1940s by the Evaporated Milk Association and the Culinary Arts Institute of Chicago, and a drink recipe from Sunsweet for vegan coffee lovers who haven’t yet decided to jeer the prune.
Were prunes ever cool? Seriously. I want to open comments below for this.
The alarm of GJ when I revealed the Kalahari’s ingredients! And when I proposed getting flight-ish with it….
I didn’t know how to sway his disgust. Honestly, the Kalahari first caught my eye because I couldn’t imagine how it was voted into Cox’ book. It didn’t even have the quirk of Laverne DeFazio’s Milk ‘n’ Pepsi.
So, the Kalahari flight. It’s not world peace, but I still wanted to give this bev a chance.
I used five milks: almond, coconut, moo, oat, and soy. I also threw in a sample of Sunsweet’s cold brew prune latte.
Cold Brew Prune Latte by Sunsweet
- Prune juice (I didn’t use Sunsweet. #SorryNotSorry)
- Coffee
- Plant milk (I used almond.)
Equipment: stirring utensil
Me: 👎🏿
GJ: 👎🏾
Another Round: No x 2, with an emphatic “hard pass” from GJ.
The latte just tasted like coffee with “something” in it. The plant-based Kalaharis tasted like a juice neither of us could make out with “something” sour, salty, or sweet in it depending on the milk.…except the one with coconut milk, which was more like a brown coconut milk with “something” in it.
The original Kalahari with moo milk was, for GJ, “a weird combination” that was “milky and sour with a slight caramely-ness”. I only got the sour and with it, a smell reminding me of Gary Yourofsky’s bomb about cow milk.