“You must be shapeless, formless, like water. When you pour water in a cup, it becomes the cup. When you pour water in a bottle, it becomes the bottle. When you pour water in a teapot, it becomes the teapot. Water can drip and it can crash. Become like water my friend.”
Bruce Lee
With summer coming (we hope) it’s helpful to consider some alternatives to just plain water which isn’t very festive and can get a bit boring.
Here are nine suggestions:
- You can use up elderly cucumber peel for a cucumbery taste; or slices of young cucumber
- use up leftover cucumber peel
- Or you can add borage flowers, for a similar taste and more beauty
- You can add a dash or two of a fruit vinegar – raspberry for example (go here for how to make your own fruit vinegar – it’s dead simple)
- Or you can add strawberries – whole, plus a few mashed in a little lemon juice – they also go well paired with cucumber slices
- Of course, slices of lemon or lime…maybe with a sprig of thyme
- Mint goes well, on its own, or with ginger or pineapple
- A slice of fennel with a slice of orange goes well – with orange bitters for a bit more interest
- A few dashes of Angostura or any other bitters adds flavour too
- A slice of peach and a raspberry
- Add a little elderflower cordial and perhaps some lemon
For more ideas go to the Radnor Hill juicy waters page.
This post is dedicated to Elizabeth Van Geest.
The first verse of Eulogy to Water
“Il pleut, il pleut, enfin et la vigne altérée
Va se voir restaurée par ce bienfait divin.
De l’eau chantons la gloire, on la méprise en vain:
C’est l’eau qui nous fait boire du vin, du vin, du vin.”
-Armand Gouffé, L’éloge de l’eau
Below is a translation, and under that a clip of this poem sung
At last, at last it rains,
The vine which was athirst
Its strength once more regains,
By heavenly bounty nursed.
So let your glasses clink
To water,—gift divine!
‘Tis water makes us drink
Good wine.
Les Garçons Trottoirs – L’éloge de l’eau
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OjzyayW1ZdA]
