I’ll Drink to That (original) (raw)

It might be interesting to make a list of all the food and drink in which characters in the Oz books partake, but I’m not going to do that just now. I do, however, want to mention a few drinks that show up in the series. One is lacasa, described in The Road to Oz as “a sort of nectar famous in Oz and nicer to drink than soda-water or lemonade.” For being so famous, however, we never see it mentioned again in the main series. There are quite a few mentions of lemonade, reportedly one of L. Frank Baum’s favorite drinks. It’s one of mine as well, although I’ve had to cut down a bit recently. For instance, a dinner pail from a tree in the Land of Ev contained a small tank of lemonade, it rains lemonade in Mo (I have to suspect that can get really sticky), and the characters in Merry Go Round come across lemonade brooks. In Forbidden Fountain, Emeralda Ozgood accidentally makes limeade with the Water of Oblivion.

Root beer, said to be the national drink of the Nome Kingdom, shows up a few times as well.

So do milk, coffee, tea, and cocoa. I believe it was Ruth Plumly Thompson who first mentioned Ozade, which is referred to in a few of her books, but she never specifically says what it is. When Singra gives Trot a magic potion in Wicked Witch, she claims that it’s Ozade. I’ve heard that, when Ozade is served at Oz conventions in the Great Outside World, it’s usually limeade. I’ve seen it suggested that Ozade and lacasa could be the same thing, but I prefer to think of them as different. And in Giant Horse, the Wizard of Oz drinks something called emeralade. In Wonder City, the Emerald City has a quite popular public soda fountain.

Speaking of soda, is there any connection between Sprite having a “lymon” taste and Baum’s first name? Probably not. Dick Martin’s Cut and Assemble the Emerald City of Oz has one of its buildings advertising Oza-Cola. I can’t recall this soda appearing anywhere else, and a Google search just brings up results pertaining to a Coca-Cola executive named Rohan Oza. One kind of beverage we don’t see much in the series is the alcoholic sort, probably due to the time in which most of them were written. One non-canonical book, Jeff Freedman’s Magic Dishpan, has a stream of wine that becomes grape juice when drunk by someone underage. A cute idea, but I have to wonder what the legal drinking age is in fairyland.

This entry was posted in Dick Martin, Eloise Jarvis McGraw, Food, John R. Neill, L. Frank Baum, Oz, Oz Authors, Rachel Cosgrove Payes, Ruth Plumly Thompson and tagged beverages, coca-cola, cut and assemble the emerald city of oz, emeralade, emeralda ozgood, lacasa, land of ev, lemonade, limeade, merry go round in oz, mo, oza-cola, ozade, root beer, soda, the forbidden fountain of oz, the giant horse of oz, the road to oz, the wicked witch of oz, the wonder city of oz. Bookmark the permalink.