Orange / Chocolate mint Fruit Water

I’ve shared how we tried a few flavor combinations of the newly discovered fruit / herb water …

Today we tried Orange with Chocolate mint.

Not too bad.

I used about half of an average sized orange, cut into about half inch thick slices, then cut in quarters.

I added a handful of mint leaves.

Kinda mushed the stuff in the jar & added 2 trays of ice cubes & filtered water.

I really enjoyed how mild this one tasted. 

I’m sure with more fruit and/or mint the flavor would be more robust. 

But that’s the beauty of making this water… you are in complete control & there is no right or wrong amount.

Viable alternative to soda?

Ready for the Fridge

I was catching up on my Facebook feed the other day … just scrolling along when some beautiful jars of colored water with fruit & herbs caught my eye. A friend had posted a link to a blog where the writer was looking for something else to drink. Something other than plain water, soda, or fruit juice.

Enter this fruit water concoction. I loved it from the first word. Now, normally I would just read stuff like this, bookmark the page & sometime later maybe go back, find it & eventually try it out.

This time … I read about it & promptly got up to go make some. Yeah, just like that. See, I don’t drink nearly enough water. It gets boring. Just like the other blogger had mentioned. Here was something simple & fun to try.

So I wondered what I’d make my first batch with. The blogger had all kinds of recipes (well, okay, 5) & my mind was thinking to what I had on hand at home. And I did not add nearly as much fruit or herb as was listed in the recipes.

ready to drink

Batch one was raspberry, pineapple mint, & lemon.

Start with a 2 quart mason jar (or equivalent)

Raspberries were frozen from our bushes last year. I used a small handful. Less than a cup for sure.

The mint is from the yard. I used maybe 10 leaves.

The lemon was juice … maybe a teaspoon worth.

Now you are supposed to use a muddler to mush the fruit & crush the leaves … to release the flavors from both. I don’t have a muddler yet so I just used a wooden spatula/spoon thing… worked fine for now.

Add ice … I used 2 trays worth.

Add water to fill jar. I used filtered water.

Now you just stick it in the fridge & wait. When reading the bloggers post, she said it tastes best after 24 hours. Well, to be fair for a first time, we waited almost 24 hours. It's my understanding from reading more that 4 to 6 hours is sufficient.

Pineapple mint ready for fridge

Wow. Not bad at all. Hubby & I were both pleased with the results. What a wonderful fresh taste it had. Now, is it something we could replace soda with? I think perhaps we could. I do crave that fizz every now & then so perhaps we can mix this with some sparkling water or something on occasion.We could certainly replace the more concentrated big ol bottles of grape juice we're drinking.

We were so happy with the first batch, we looked to see what we had to try another. Batch 2 was pineapple & spearmint. It’s in the fridge now ….

There is a book out which has something like 50 recipes for flavor combinations to try. It’s on my Amazon wishlist … until then I will wander the internet looking for more flavor combos.

One small problem ... if we keep this up, I'm going to need my mint plants to grow faster. Or plant more. Or both!

what a dreary day outside

I see I missed a few days. Not much tho. Not much exciting happened either. Last night tho, we went to Joy’s for the group meeting. It was nice. We caught up a bit then got into talking about 2012. The topic provided for much conversation as there are many views on what may happen when the time comes. I put out feelers for the group I want to get going & some seemed interested so that’s cool. I think it’ll be a lot of fun to learn in a group environment.

So hubby got his paycheck that covered his time off. Yuck! I have no idea exactly how we’ll make it until the next check, but somehow we always do.

I mentioned my daughter getting us a gym membership for Christmas. Well, it was purchased before she went on nights. Since then we’ve tried to figure out how we can go together. It’s just not working out. We talked about her seeing if she could get her money back & we’d put it towards home gym stuff instead. She is not one to confront people, so that went nowhere too. She knows that I would love to go to a gym, but hey, I’ll be flexible & do whatever. So the latest mention was for me to see if one of a couple friends would wanna go with me. I had 2 people to choose from. Amy & Cindy. I approached Cindy first because she deals with depression & my thought was maybe something positive like this would help her. And she wants to lose some weight too. She has said yes, so we’ll see if it works out. If something falls thru, I’ll be asking Amy. I was really torn in who to choose. I want to spend more time with Amy. I am really enjoying our friendship. But, I also want to spend more time with Cindy. I miss our friendship as we don’t see each other as much. So, I guess choosing Cindy was the right choice. Especially if we get to move forward with the combining of our households with Amy.

*insert break for breakfast, then some out & about time with the hubby.

Hubby is now over at Joe’s for a bit. I’m just kinda here. Sitting around with one of those ‘eh’ moods. I hate those. I should be doing several things, but don’t feel like doing any of them. I think part of it is the gloomy day outside today. And it could also be the fact I’ve been off my pills for some time now.

Our herb order came the other day, but I have not sat & made more pills yet. I think that is because it seems to be such a daunting task since I’m all out. I’ll have to just make some every 2 weeks or maybe even every week so it’s not so big of a task.

I changed our sheets. Oh yay. I stood looking at the bedroom for a bit. It’s messy because things get piled in there. And I was looking at moving things around again too. Mainly to get the bed off the shared wall with the daughter’s room. That way, if the bed . . . ‘ahem’ . . . moves, it wont be hitting her wall. I opted to just leave things alone for the moment tho, since several things don’t belong in there & I should get those moved to a better place before tackling moving everything.

Well, guess I can see what I can find to occupy my time in front of this thing for a while.