I just read the first paragraph of your online article "Ice, Ice Baby". And adding food coloring to the water you freeze too keep the punchbowl cool SOUNDS smart, but when it melts, its still going to eventually end up watering down the punch bowl/drinks anyway. Here's something I read around five years ago from an Idea card I received in a Martha Stewart's Living invitation to subscribe to their magazine... (BTW: I'm not re-typing it directly from the card. I lost that card years ago.)

         To make sure your ice doesn't water-down beverages when it melts -- use frozen iced tea cubes to keep your iced tea cool, use frozen Hawaiian Punch cubes to cool your Hawaiian Punch, Pepsi-Cola cubes to keep your Pepsi cool, etc.

         You just pour the exact same beverage into an ice tray(s), freeze them, and then when it's party-time, put the cubes in a bucket right near the same beverage its going to be cooling (label the cube buckets so people will know which cubes to put into which drink) and then when people help themselves to iced tea, they first put a few iced tea cubes into their glass and it eventually just melts into more of the exact same iced tea/Hawaiian Punch/Pepsi Cola/Lemonade/etc. Same strength and NOT watering down the drink AT ALL. I thought this was one of those Simple-But-Brilliant ideas offered every now and then and I never forgot it.

Sincerely,

Miss Freya Friedman



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