Well, duh! When left alone, water is the original
no-calorie beverage. But for some reason, humankind is just not content to
leave nature alone. (In more ways than one.) Poor water, our most precious
resource just doesn’t get the respect it deserves. For some reason, society
thinks it needs to be “improved” before they will consider drinking it.
My husband falls in that category. He claims the
military ruined water consumption for him, and the way it’s provided to
personnel in the field probably does make it unpleasant to drink. Still, it was
an obstacle I wanted him to overcome. He needed to lose weight, and strenuous
exercise is not an option when you have MS. Neither are the so-called
calorie-free “beverage enhancers” with artificial colors and flavors.
Out of desperation, I started experimenting with infusions
of garden peppermint and the peel of abundant citrus I had during the winter. My
husband actually liked the combination of orange and mint. With a substitute he
could tolerate, we began the process of cutting out the sugary fruit syrups he
was using in his water. He’s lost 50 lbs. since last fall. Though it pleased me
to find a solution, it came with a couple of downsides. The first one was
preparation. It takes time to chop mint and peel the zest off an orange. Then
the solids would need to be strained out of the water once they did their job. Even
though I’m not working outside the home right now, I still have plenty to do. I
also knew my mint and citrus supplies would dwindle in the summer. Mint doesn’t
like high heat, so it goes on hiatus here in Texas during the summer, getting
scraggly with increasingly smaller leaves. In the quest to keep to my single
ingredient mission, I found my convenience products in a couple of places. They
are in the small bottles pictured above.
The larger bottle is orange oil. The smaller is
ingestible mint oil. Note, I said oil, not extract. I purchased the
orange oil from King Arthur Flour. The mint oil is produced and sold by Piping
Rock. It may be possible to find orange and mint oil in your grocery store.
Check the baking aisle first. I will warn you that sticker shock may occur,
especially if you get a large bottle of citrus oil from KAF. (They also have
lemon and lime.) However, these oils are incredibly concentrated. For a 16-20
oz. container of water, you only need 1 drop of each flavor. I call that
economical, as well as guilt-free.
The
Project
Queen
