Wednesday, May 20, 2009

Bug Juice? No, Green Punch!


I had half a mind to be high-minded about the The Fruit of the Spirit: 100th Anniversary of Bittinger Lutheran Parish recipe selections. I really thought I wanted to prove that community cookbooks were treasure troves of fabulous recipes you might otherwise never find.

And then I found Green Punch.
Green Punch
Lottie Brenneman

2 pkgs. lemon-lime Kool-Aid
1 (46-oz.) can pineapple juice
2 quts. water
1 qt. 7-Up or ginger ale
Mix together and add ginger ale or 7-Up last. Sherbert may be added.
Oh, hell, yes. It's nearly Memorial Day weekend, it's going to be in the mid-80s here in DC, and Green Punch? Green Punch sounds like icy cold perfection.

I'm assuming that the packages of Kool-Aid are the "add 1 cup of sugar" kinds...one envelope each, which would normally make 2 quarts of Kool-Aid. I also assume that, with the soda and the juice, there's no need at all to actually add sugar, so the omission in the ingredient list is not so much an omission as a nod to not developing diabetes. Personally, I find diet 7-Up and diet ginger ale to be perfectly acceptable substitutes for the full-sugar variety, so you could shave a couple hundred calories off every serving if you want to make a substitution.

Then again, on the same page, there's "Easy Punch," which has Kool-Aid, pineapple juice, water, 7-Up, ice cream and 3 cups of sugar. If you want to get your sugar high on, you certainly have options in The Fruit of the Spirit.

Green drinks make me think of camp (but in a good way), picnics, birthday parties, field days... It's the sort of thing that feels fancy when you're five. As summer comes on, I think that fancy-for-a-five-year-old is well worth embracing in our culinary endeavors. Cheers.

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