Healthy May drink - fight the heat

Dear readers,

last week I spent in Germany and it did not feel like summer might be coming up at all...Hamburg, 11C, hail...but I can tell you, summer IS approaching and especially in the Southern hemisphere we are already facing temperatures over 40C combined with humidity. Which makes you want to drink all day long. Which also is a necessity as we are starting to sweat much more and our bodies off and on just need to be cooled down a bit, especially if we are outside a lot!

And then the complaints are starting..."Water is boring, I don't want to drink water all day, I need something tasty.." and so on. The last thing you want to do though is chug down some sugary drink, which in the end will make you feel even thirstier and add some nasty calories onto your daily food regime.

Following a few refreshing drinks in order to make your liquid intake less boring:

A very easy and very effective option is freshly squeezed watermelon juice! Extremely thirst quenching, add some lemon and some fresh mint leaves and have a jar ready in your fridge.

Further we have:


Green Tea! Prepare a strong brew and add for example just lemon juice, put the jar in the fridge and enjoy the cool refreshment. Another option is adding some Mango Nectar (sugar free) and some sprigs of fresh mint, leave it to cool and refresh! 

Easier than all of that: pour a big bottle of sparkling water into a jar over a lot of fresh mint or a freshly squeezed lemon. Delicious!  


Maybe it would not cross your mind thinking of summer drinks, but there is always cucumber (not an option for Germany at the moment! Sad, but true!). Cucumbers contain Vitamin C (surprise!) and important antioxidants. You can mix some chunks into your fresh watermelon juice or prepare as follows:

Cut up a cucumber into small chunks, cover in the amount of water you want to drink and let it soak in the fridge overnight. In the morning, strain the mixture and discard the chunks. 
Adding mint makes the drink even more cooling and refreshing, just let it soak with the cucumber chunks in the water overnight. I also like to add a squeeze of lime before serving.



I find these drinks not only very healthy, but also very addictive and like to keep big jars or bottles of them in my fridge!