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Save for special occasions only.
So let’s assume you’ve figured out a way to filter your tap water. Now you’ve got gallons of the stuff, and you’re starting to use it to refill your pet water dishes, to add to recipes, and even to boil pasta and rice. Just as having a washer and dryer in your garage will make you much more cavalier about how many loads of laundry you do, having an unlimited source of clean drinking water will make you use clean water in ways you never considered before. Heck, we’d bathe in that ceramic-filtered water if it weren’t for its 6-gallon-a-day capacity.
But when it comes to pouring some into a glass and chugging it down, filtered water is, in a word, dull. It’s flavorless (imagine!) and non-entertaining. Nothing bubbles. Nothing coats your tongue with sweetness. It’s like the water Grandpa used to drink, and you know how boring those visits with him could be.
If you're looking for cheap beverages, you might want to flavor your water, for your own sake and especially for the sake of your children. Hopefully, you were able to get through your kids’ early years without having to add chocolate flavoring to their milk. We remain hopeful that you’ll get through this next phase without having to add an "imitation flavored soft drink mix" to their drinking water. I say this looking over my shoulder, knowing that gigantic smiling pitcher might burst through my wall at any moment. (Oh yeah!)
But sometimes you and your family are going to want something besides water.
Those flavored drink packages have to top the list of what not to drink. I'm not meaning to be a contrarian here. But you should not consider pouring artificial colors and flavors into your newly clean water. If you do that, you’re recontaminating it, and for what? Nobody is refreshed by Blue No. 5 and polystereate, whatever those are. I know Kool Aid is a staple in poor urban areas, but we can do better than that. Say it with me. We’re going to make cheap beverages by flavoring our water with stuff that we actually want to add to our bodies.
There is a place for sugary, artificially flavored, bright red, add-yer-own-sugar powdered soft drink mix, and that place is a birthday party. When you have a large gathering of children and they’re going to be scarfing down large quantities of sweet stuff, why not? But like the birthday cake itself, Kool Aid should be a “special occasion” once-a-year kind of beverage. You don’t serve your family birthday cake every day, right? Don’t let them drink sugary beverages every day, either, no matter how much it helps stretch the budget.
Coming next: OK, what do you use to flavor your water?
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