Quick Tip: Make Your Own ‘Enhanced Water’ by VaLerie K
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Now that it’s summer where I live and the sun’s rays are steeper so we sweat and lose fluids, it’s more important than ever to drink plenty of water each day. There is really no substitute, all the sugar and added ingredients in enhanced waters do NOT provide extra benefits that you can’t get from basic H2O (and you know soda is a terrible thing to drink, regular or diet, right? If not, click HERE and HERE).
Plus you can probably save yourself some cash (water may not be free, but it’s still relatively cheap, especially if you filter your own water at home).
But wait, I have a confession to make. I drink a lot of the stuff, but even to me, sometimes water seems kinda boring. Maybe these tricks I’m about to share will help you discover a latent love for the liquid of life, or like me you will enjoy the variety and have renewed zest for drinking good ole WATER.
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1. Lemon – I add a squirt of lemon juice to my cold glass of water. Fresh-squeezed is best, but if you don’t have lemons handy, using the store-bought lemon juice is ok too.
Alternative method: add a little lemon juice to the water in your ice cube tray (squirt it evenly across the tray). That saves you from adding lemon juice on a glass-by-glass basis, just add the cubes and the drink is already flavored.
*Added benefit: I find that my ice cube trays retain a slight scent and flavor of food from being in the freezer, a kind of faint onion-y taste, but guess what… the lemon juice takes care of that too!
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2. Mint – I have some rogue mint plants that appeared in my flower bed, so I moved them into a pot (mint has a tendency to try to take over). I pinch off a few leaves, break them into little bits and put those in my water as well. Taste the minty freshness!
If you don’t have mint yourself, but you have friends with back yard gardens, chances are high that there’s mint in there somewhere, whether they know it or not. Mint has small but wide, textured leaves that are fuzzy, and all you have to do is crush a leaf and smell to find out if it’s mint or not. Or just buy some at the supermarket.
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I like the combo of lemon and mint, but you might prefer them solo. Consider trying lime juice as well and suddenly there are, let’s see… at least five viable options.
