I'm Drinkin' the Koolaid

Today I walked to the post office after lunch, passing the grocery store along the way.  To have an excuse to extend my walking time on this fairly warm, relatively windless day, (likely the last day I will be able to go out walking in a long sleeved shirt with no jacket until next spring), I stopped in at the grocery store and wandered up and down the aisles.

There were a few products I had not seen before, so I took some time to check them out. As it happens not one of them is a product that is safe for either myself or my husband to eat, but it was fun looking at them: reading the nutritional value labels and ingredients lists, inspecting the packaging, deciding whether or not I liked the fonts the packaging designers came up with...silly fun, but fun none the less and it kept me on my feet a lot longer!  My doctor would be most pleased about that part of it, hahaha.

I did find some fresh free range chicken for 30% off, so grabbed a small pack, then I wandered down the juice aisle and noticed that Koolaid has some liquid drink flavourings.  I stopped to have a closer look at the brightly coloured labels I remember from my childhood.  haha  Although the drawing of the jug on the label has changed shape and even its protrayed "personality" seems to have been updated, I was overwhelmed by a flood of memories of drinking Koolaid as a kid.  It was a rare treat because of all the sugar mom had to add to the powder and water, but at least twice every summer she would make up a full package of the tasty drink for myself and my friend from across the street to consume between us throughout the day of playing in the back yard.  How two wee girls managed to drink the equivalent of 2 full litres of the stuff in one afternoon, I will never know, but drink it we did, smacking our lips as we chugged it back, thinking we were the most favoured children in the neighbourhood.  None of the other moms could afford to use up a whole cup of sugar to make drinks for the kids.  Water is all most of us ever got mid-afternoons in the summer time, so my friend and I were careful to keep our little secret on the days my mom made Koolaid!  We were not about to share such a delightful and rare treat!  We would hide the plastic jug of drink in my father's music studio in the back of the property, sneaking in every few minutes to fill our glasses once again.  O my goodness, I have not thought about those days in a very long time.  

Of course I had to buy a couple of the flavouring bottles to bring home today: an orange and a grape. Those were my two childhood favourites, followed closely by the fruit punch when it first came out, it being also the summer my mother seemed most amenable to making pitchers of the stuff for us.  

So, I am sitting here with two small glasses of flavoured water in front of me on the desk: one flavoured with orange and one with grape.  No sugar, no carbs, no sodium, just flavours that take me back to the best days of my childhood summers.  What fun!