Our family is a bit atypical in that we don’t drink soda and we don’t drink juice. Instead we drink lots of water, goat milk, and smoothies made with either goat milk, goat milk yogurt, or water. Occasionally we’ll drink coffee or tea, but that’s it.
While we do drink quite a bit of goat milk, we really mostly just drink water. I must admit that we’re a bit finicky about our water. We have a really good filter on our drinking water and we’ve become accustomed to water that doesn’t have an “after taste”. In fact some of us have been caught making faces when we find that water away from home doesn’t taste very good.
Fortunately most of us don’t drink our water plain – we drink our water with lemon. This can mask water that doesn’t taste the way we prefer. We started the lemon water habit more than a decade ago because there are a lot of health benefits to drinking lemon with your water. Most of the benefits come from using freshly squeezed lemon juice, but to be honest – “ain’t nobody got time (or money) for that!”
Especially not when there are ten of us who drink it.
So instead of using freshly squeezed lemons, we just use a big bottle of lemon juice. It weighs 32 oz and we go through approximately one of them each week.
I know, that’s a LOT of lemon juice!
One of the children’s jobs is to make sure Mom and Dad always have water with lemon available to us. Jim is actually really good about stopping what he is doing and getting more water for himself if he runs out. But me, I’m terrible. I will go for hours thinking to myself, “I really need to go get a drink of water” and never actually get it!
But if there is water in front of me, I’ll drink it.
It actually totally cracks me up because my family quite often will grab my water if they see it full and then hand it to me with the command, “Drink.”
I dutifully do. LOL
Usually I have a glass that is actually made of glass. But in the candy kitchen where I spend a lot of my time, I don’t use glass because it is unsafe. Instead I use a Tervis tumbler with a lid*. I don’t know how many of you use the Tervis tumblers – and if any of you have the same problem as me – but I can’t drink from them when they have a lid on without spilling water down my shirt. It’s become a big joke in our family.
I digress.
Jim and I (and the children) each prefer our water a different way. Jim prefers his with ice. I prefer mine room temperature. Jim gets 3 capfuls of lemon juice. I get 2 capfuls of lemon juice.
The children had the entire system down and would dutifully fetch us water with lemon when they saw our glasses were empty or when they were asked. They all make me proud because they have a real servant’s heart about serving us this way!
This was our system for years. And then about six months ago, Jim came up with a brilliant idea – a bottle pourer* like the ones they use for alcohol.
He got a pack of them and put them on the lemon juice bottles we store in different locations in the house and the business.
They work beautifully!!
Each one pours 1/2 oz of lemon juice, which is a good compromise between our two preferences and works really well if you are using a big glass (20-24 oz) like we do. If you use a smaller glass, you probably wouldn’t want to pour the whole serving (unless you like it really lemon-y).
It adds about 1.5 inches to the height of the bottle, so you may need slightly more space in your fridge shelf.
I know it sounds simple, but I can’t tell you how much time this has saved us. All you need to do is fill the glass with water, tip the lemon juice into it, and stop when the pouring stops.
No opening and closing of caps. No measuring capfuls of lemon juice. No overpouring so you have more lemon than water.
With how much water with lemon we drink, this one simple tool has saved us hours and hours of time over the past six months. And with how busy we are, every little bit helps!
I don’t know how many of you add lemon to your water. And even if you do, you probably don’t go through as much lemon juice as we do – but I definitely wanted to share this trick with everyone and hope you find it helpful!!
