Drink of the Day

Okay, take a clean bottle like the one pictured here – which I use – and pop in a partly peeled lemon. The lemon – which must be sour not sweet – acts as a preservative. If you want a nice tang to your drink, give the lemon a squeeze before popping it in and you can even add more lemon if you’re a lemon freak like I am. Now, go out into the garden and pick nice fresh sprigs of whatever combo of herbs you like to make your Drink of the Day. I start the day out early, between 5 and 6 a.m., so I prefer a combination of mints, and maybe an allspice leaf or pineapple sage, but it varies each day. After adding a few sprigs of the herbs that you would like today, fill up the bottle with water and give it a shake.
That’s your Drink of the Day, and it will last you all through the day. Add fresh water to the bottle as necessary throughout the day, and you will notice that the flavor changes depending on whether you drink it all down at once, or you let it sit for an hour or so.
Remember:
Use sprigs – your herbs like a little pruning on a regular basis. Do not use individual leaves or anything that might come through the bottle and choke you. You want your herbs to last all day inside the bottle, not stuck in your teeth (or throat)!
Also, never add sugar to your Drink because it will ferment bacteria and the lemon-sweet mixture will rot your teeth! If you want a sweet taste, add a sprig of Stevia (slightly crushed to get it going) or maybe even a Miracle Fruit but, if you do, I would stick the berry deep inside the lemon so it doesn’t pop out and choke you! I have never used Miracle Fruit personally, although we grow it here, because I prefer more savory-lemony drinks, even early in the morning.
At 6 p.m. or so, empty out the bottle and select a clean one for your Drink of the Evening. Now you might want to play with more savory herbs like sages and even chili peppers.
However, after 6 p.m., my beverage of choice is red wine; GRAK prefers a gin & tonic; but whatever your choice…
…Salud!
And what does GRAK think of my Drink of the Day? He doesn’t like it at all! He even keeps our bottles separate, Kosher-style, because he hates the smell of that “herbal lemon shit” that’s left in my bottles. When Gerald wants water, he only wants the taste of water, not “some other weird crap”.
One time while walking the streets of New Orleans, I gave Gerald a Tic Tac, which he hates the flavor of, and he mindlessly put it in his mouth. A second later, he spat it out onto the sidewalk! He actually spat out the Tic Tac where he stood, and there we were looking down at it. “Don’t give me that shit again, please”, he growled, walking on. All I could do was laugh.
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