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Thirst-Quenching, Low-Cal & Low-Alcohol Drinks |  |
Fresh & Seasonal, Perfect for Summer. Budget-Friendly. Just Two Ingredients. Weeknight Easy, Weekend Special. Weight Watchers Friendly. Low Carb. Naturally Gluten Free.
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When You Sense Thirst, It's Already Too Late
Brad Gilbert, the well-known tennis player, tennis coach, ESPN tennis announcer, author and in fact, a relative! In his book Winning Ugly: Mental Warfare in Tennis--Lessons from a Master, Gilberg says this about hydration for athletes, “By the time you feel thirsty, it’s too late.” It’s true for champion athletes, it’s true for couch potatoes – and all of us in between.
A few years back, many nights I found myself gulping down a glass of wine while cooking supper, even with good wines truly worth a slow-sipping savor.
What I came to realize is that at six o’clock, my brain is ready for relaxation but my body is thirsting for – literally – a big, long swallow of liquid.
What a revelation! Perhaps I’m not alone? Back in January, I asked readers to share a "healthy habit" for the new year. (See the comments in Quick 'n' Easy Raw Salad.) So many wrote, "I want to figure out how to drink more water."
Why Is It So Important To Stay Hydrated?
Water is such an important part of our everyday diet. Here's just some of the roles that water plays in a healthy lifestyle.
- fills you up, staves off hunger
- ensures you don't confuse hunger with thirst
- keeps our skin and joints supple and limber
- helps the kidneys flush waste from our bodies
- transports nutrients throughout the body
- regulates our internal body temperature
- forms saliva for digestion
- absorbs shocks to the brain and spinal cord
- helps deliver oxygen throughout the body
- replaces the some 60% of our body weight that is water (more for babies, children and men; less for women; less for people overweight)
SOURCES Education from physical therapists & physicians supplemented by USGS (U.S. Geological Survey)
My Favorite Thirst-Quenching, Low-Alcohol Drinks
BITTERS & SODA Especially during the winter, the pour of choice while cooking dinner is now a Bitters & Soda: quick and easy to fix; lots of liquid; hardly any alcohol; and somehow it appeals, at that hour, in a way plain old tap water doesn’t. Many thanks to Karen Tedesco from FamilyStyle Food for introducing me to Bitters & Soda!
BEER & GINGER ALE My new summer drink obsession happened by accident. One warm Friday night, friends were coming for dinner. While cooking, I mixed a splash of beer with ginger ale and ice – and it quenched my thirst so quickly! So when everyone arrived, I offered the same drink to the women. Talk about lightweights (and cheap dates!), three of us drank a single bottle of beer all night long yet never had an empty glass!
GINGER ALE WINE COOLER But we're wine drinkers not beer drinkers so it probably comes as no surprise that unless there's a bottle or two of beer left from a party, wine works just as well if not better.
What's Your Trick for Drinking More Water?
Share your favorite tip in the comments! The simpler the better! The more creative, the better! The wackier, the ... ... well, if it works, go for it!
BEER & GINGER ALE
Time to throat: 1 minute
Serves 1
- Ice
- Splash of beer (about 3 tablespoons or 1-1/2 ounces)
- Diet ginger ale
Combine in a big glass, drink up!
Sealed with a wine cork, an open bottle of beer lasts a couple of weeks in the fridge, drunk just a splash at a time. I’ve become partial to Corona Light but other beers would likely work too. I’ve tried this with everything from Diet 7-Up to Diet Coke (whatever’s hanging around after family parties), but diet ginger ale really does the trick. I “like” this drink with other sodas but “love it!” with ginger ale. This is now my standard low-alcohol “party drink” too. Even people who don’t drink beer (or like beer) like this concoction.
WEIGHT WATCHERS Old Points 0 & PointsPlus 0 SmartPoints 0 & Freestyle 0 & myWW green 0 & blue 0 & purple 0 (for myWW, 3 drinks for 1 point, drink up!)GINGER ALE WINE COOLER
Time-to-table: 1 minute
Serves 1
- Ice
- Splash of wine (about 3 tablespoons or 1-1/2 ounces)
- Diet ginger ale
Combine in a big glass, drink up!
WEIGHT WATCHERS Old Points 1 & PointsPlus 0 & SmartPoints 1 & Freestyle 1 & myWW green 1 & blue 1 & purple 1BITTERS & SODA
Time to throat: 1 minute
Serves 1
- Ice
- Splash of bitters (about 1 teaspoon)
- Club soda
Combine in a big glass, drink up!
Look for bitters in the liquor department, a tiny bottle is expensive but you consume it, literally, a teaspoon at a time.
WEIGHT WATCHERS Old Points 0 & PointsPlus 0 & SmartPoints 0 & Freestyle 0 & myWW green 0 & blue 0 & purple 0Seasonal Cooking: This Same Week, Across the Years
Rhubarb Upside-Down Cake Strawberry Shortcake Iowa-Style Buttered Pecan Ice Cream Pecan Meringue Cookies Finnish Summer Soup Grilled Vegetables in Foil My Perfect (Unsweet, Unboozy) Sangria Canadian Flag Cake Thirst-Quenching, Low-Cal, Low-Alcohol Drinks Chocolate Raspberry Icebox Cake Estonian Deviled Eggs Smoked Whitefish Spread on Cucumber
This Week, Elsewhere
~ Chicken & Dumplings ~from Mama Josephine's
~ more St. Louis Restaurant Recipes ~
My Weekly Column in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch
~ Mom's Potato Salad ~
~ more Recent Recipes ~
A Veggie Venture
Kitchen Parade is written by second-generation food columnist Alanna Kellogg and features fresh, seasonal dishes for every-day healthful eating and occasional indulgences.
Quick Suppers are Kitchen Parade favorites and feature recipes easy on the budget, the clock, the waistline and the dishwasher. Do you have a favorite recipe that other Kitchen Parade readers might like? Just send me a quick e-mail via recipes@kitchen-parade.com. How to print a Kitchen Parade recipe. Never miss a recipe! If you like this recipe, sign up for a free e-mail subscription. If you like Kitchen Parade, you're sure to like my food blog about vegetable recipes, too, A Veggie Venture. If you make this recipe, I'd love to know your results! Just leave a comment below.
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I like to drink lime cordial mixed with water, either still or sparkling. Just put a slug at the bottom of a tall glass, add water and mix. Add ice if liked. I also like to add lime cordial to lager beer - in England it is called a lager and lime. I am also partial to ginger beer(which is non-alcoholic) mixed with fresh lime juice or lime cordial. Add ice. I guess you could also use ginger ale, but I haven't tried that. Some brands of ginger beer available in the UK can be extremely hot, as in sharp, with ginger.
ReplyDeleteOr, English lemonade, which is like 7 Up, is added to either a lager or a bitter beer, kind of like what you mentioned above. Those drinks are called a shandy, or in the case of using a bitter beer, a bitter shandy.
Aiiii, Catherine, great tips. I have a bottle of Rose's Lime Juice in the fridge, this is lime cordial, yes? Thanks for your insights!
ReplyDeleteYup, Rose's is a lime cordial. Nice post. I love soda/seltzer with bitters also. But I like bitters in anything! Interesting take on the Shandy (classic Shandy is half beer,half soda; usually the British "lemonade" - 7-up - but sometimes ginger beer or ginger ale). Your version looks really refreshing. Reminds me of someone I knew years ago, a long-distance runner, who after a run would pour half a beer (preferably light) and fill the rest of the glass with ice cubes! Sounds disgusting, but I tried it once on a really hot day and it wasn't half bad.
ReplyDeleteSo good to find these comments!
ReplyDeleteI like water or seltzer or sparkling mineral water with 2 tsps.
of flavoring; bitters or lemon or juice or diet soda. I can drink
this all day. Plain water gags me.