This post is part of my series, “Kickin’ It Old Skool: Why and How We Are Old-Fashioned” or KIOS for short.  If you’re new to the series, please read my disclaimer before continuing on.  I’m keeping a table of contents to this series here so you can see what I’ve already written about and what more there is to come.

I never expected explaining what we eat to take so many posts!  I guess it’s not until you try to list everything you eat that you realize the breadth of food that we are privileged to enjoy in America.  Today’s post is about what we drink.

Water:  Primarily we drink water.  It’s free and necessary for life.  How much better can you get than that?  Currently, we drink water straight from the tap.  Probably, we should be filtering our water to get rid of the chlorine but haven’t gotten that far yet.  We have lots of water bottles and try to take water with us wherever we go, in order to avoid buying bottled water (which is expensive and not so great for the environment).

Juice:  We treat any kind of juice as a infrequent treat.  During the fall/winter, we buy apple cider from the farmer’s market, drink small glasses at a time, and savor the flavor.  Occasionally, Nik gets a craving for orange juice so we ever-so-rarely buy orange juice at the farmer’s market (which is obviously imported from Florida).  It’s the best OJ we’ve ever had (except for fresh squeezed) and well worth the price.  We do consider this a special treat!  Usually though, you will find that our fridge does not have any juice in it.

Milk:  See my post here about the milk that we drink.

Alcohol:  Nik is in charge of buying beer when we need it, usually for entertaining.  He tries to stick with local breweries, two of his favorites being Heavy Seas and Brewer’s Alley.  We hardly ever drink wine but do use it for cooking. (I know next to nothing about wine but I do know that there are lots of wineries in Maryland so if you do drink wine, check them out!)

Soda*:  It never crosses our doorstep unless someone brings it for a party.  In fact, at our house, we like to call soda, “chemicals of death” or COD for short.  This is based on a study Nik read a long time ago which showed a correlation between drinking soda and dying earlier than non-soda drinkers.  I’ve never really liked soda (the carbonation makes me feel funny) so it wasn’t any trouble for me to give it up.  Nik definitely had a daily soda habit so it was much harder for him.  Perhaps me asking him if he wanted, “water or chemicals of death for dinner?” made a difference in helping him give it up? 🙂  Seriously, though, with no redeeming value to soda and the potential for harm, it seemed wise to us to stop drinking it.  We do indulge occasionally at restaurants or parties but it’s the very rare indulgence.

Tea/coffee/hot chocolate:  Neither Nik or I like coffee so we don’t drink it.  If we did, we would certainly look for fair-trade, responsibly grown, locally roasted coffee (maybe from Zeke’s).  Nik actually is not a hot-drink person at all.  I enjoy a cup of tea every now and then and must admit to not knowing much about the tea that I drink.  Currently, I have more PG Tips than I’ll ever be able to drink, thanks to my dad’s visit to my brother and family in England last year.  Once Ellie is old enough to enjoy it, I’ll probably start making hot chocolate from scratch.  It’s very easy and delicious!

Kombucha:  I was brewing and drinking my own kombucha for awhile and really liked it.  I had intended to start drinking it again recently but got pregnant instead.  Everything I read recommended not starting to drink kombucha if you are pregnant because it has mild detoxifying effects.  (From what I can tell, it’s OK to drink it while pregnant if you were drinking it before you got pregnant.)  So once B2 is born, I’ll probably track down a friend with a kombucha SCOBY to give away and start making and drinking it again.

at the beginning of the brewing process (from 2009)

at the end (after the new SCOBY has grown)

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*Yes, it pains me to admit that now I say “soda” instead of “pop”.  When I moved East 10 years ago, I said “pop” as any good Alaska would and wow, did I get funny looks and teasing.  I felt awfully uppity saying “soda”, as if I was trying to pretend to be rich and snobby, but I got tired of all the “pop” reactions.  So I consciously changed my terminology and now say “soda” without thinking about it, unless I go back home to Alaska and then I feel funny saying either word!

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I’m not sure which study Nik read in the news that prompted us to give up soda drinking but here’s a good summary of some of the negative effects of drinking soda (particularly diet soda).  And yes, we do know the difference between correlation and causation but there just doesn’t seem to be any compelling reason to drink soda (along with many reasons not to), so we don’t!