póg mo thóin!

Water is delicious! I miss NYC tap water- I'm in FL and the water here tastes totally weird to me now (it even smells horendous- I hestitate to even shower in it). So I've stocked up on bottled!

The other day when we returned from running errands on a hot day, I drank down a tall, cold glass of tap water, tilting it back 'til the ice cubes (softened around the edges from just a few moments in the water) hit my cheek.

I put down the frosted glass and said in surprise, "That was good."

The right thing is the right thing.

(I also said just last night "I don't think I really get beer just yet." But I do like a little glass on a hot day.)

Drinking cold clear water is for me like sinking gently, naked, into the quiet rapids of a mountain river or stream, on a blazingly hot day. Pure magic as that one little drink of water makes cold my chest and belly as it goes down. I submerge into the water and the water submerges into me. Little else brings life to me so true and free.

Also, ice cold beer.

Oh yes, oh yes!

One of the things keeping me in Vancouver is the quality of the municipal tap water.

/remembers days of cliff diving off of waterfalls from North West Coastal glacial melt
//does-not-remember balls-shrinking coldness of said pure water

I remember a story in an anthology I had as a kid in which some historical figure -- I'm thinking Sun Yat-Sen, could it be? arrived somewhere after an arduous journey and cupped his hands to scoop up delicious water from a well. The description was so compelling that for an improbably long time I'd fill the sink with water so I could do the same thing.

I live in the water capitol of the west: Malvern. The stuff that comes bubbling through the granite is the tastiest H2O on the planet.

Triode, a chroi, you forgot to finish the thought!

Póg mo thóin agus faigh bas ar son Eireann!
(wish I could find the accents on this keyboard)

But I agree, ice-cold water on a sunny day deserves a Slainte!

"... I'm in FL and the water here tastes totally weird to me now (it even smells horendous- I hestitate to even shower in it). ..."

My, my, how times have changed. Back in the 1890s, a number of Florida cities built tourist businesses getting NYC folks to come down for the sun and the "waters." Sulfur water is prevalent in Northern Florida, and it's generally good for you, as well as being super for washing hair (although you'll need a little more shampoo). Where I live in Jacksonville (html cache of a PDF, page down to Page 5 for water quality report details, if you're interested), our municipal water source is a well field of 15 deep sand wells near Richlands, North Carolina, where the water is naturally flouridated, and requires only a bit of chlorine be added for sanitation once we get it, so the water quality here is very good. The 15 wells draw their water from the Upper and Middle Cretaceous Sand Aquifers.

Out in Nassau County, where my inland place is, the well field is local to the town, and there are appreciable levels of dissolved calcium and magnesium, generally as carbonates, that make the tap water heart healthy, as is true for towns with water sources in most of Northern Florida. Down in the south part of the state, municipal water sources are generally pretty good, too, thanks to the massive flows of fresh water generally south, through the porous underground limestone formations that make up most of the peninsula.

That thin, over-chlorinated stuff that drips out of NYC faucets is of little interest to those accustomed to the varied and mineral rich waters of Florida. And most old time Southern crackers abhor truly cold water on a hot summer day, believing, without much justification from medical science, that it can stop your heart. But I do find that if I am sweating a lot from working outdoors, it is easier to drink more cool water, than truly cold water.

Although, I must say, that my preferred summertime drink is now Luzianne tea, made extra strength by the 3 quart pitcher (use 4 of the quart sized tea bags), with a dash of salt, and 3/4 cup of brown sugar dissolved while the tea is still hot. You make this first thing in the morning, in a heavy glass pitcher, and set it in the refrigerator, until noon, when it's ready to drink. When it's cool, peel the sections of a lemon (or 1/2 a sweet red grapefruit), and let the citrus meat float in the tea, slowly releasing flavor and pulp. Pour over ice only if serving to Yankees.

After 5 p.m., if not operating the tractor, the automobile or the boat, add Southern Comfort and rum to taste.

In north western NC, there are many cool springs to slurp from, even in the midsummer heat of July. Water is indeed tasty.

My, my, how times have changed. Back in the 1890s, a number of Florida cities built tourist businesses getting NYC folks to come down for the sun and the "waters."

I'm sure there is great water available in Florida, considering the lushness and moisture of the climate. "Taking the waters" did not always mean imbibing in the nineteenth century, though - it often meant mineral waters for 'bathing' in (swimming or soaking) and for skin treatments. The mineral-bath trend was a huge part of the late nineteenth century's obsession with health and hygeine: I imagine those early Florida developers were well aware of the allure of the mineral-spring idea as embodied in Hot Springs or Saratoga and wished to draw development their way. And even though people did drink some mineral waters, remember that it was for medicinal reasons: it wasn't always expected to taste good, though sometimes it does.

Though I have no particular memory of the taste of water when I was in Florida last year. I remember that in East Texas, our well water was full of health-giving minerals, no doubt, but was very alkaline and very unpleasant tasting. My former summer camp in New Jersey had well water which was miserably sulfurous.

For the most part, people didn't drink much straight water until the early twentieth century. The history of water drinking is interesting: the early colonists considered it fit mainly for animals and Americans relied mostly on mildly alcoholic ciders, small beers, and diluted rums as beverages until the first part of the nineteenth century. The image of water as an acceptable drinking beverage all on its own is in part result of the PR campaigns of temperance crusades: the Cold Water Army sought to replace traditional small beers and diluted rums with water as a beverage. The phrase "on the wagon" makes reference to the perceived undrinkability of plain water:

Those who had vowed to give up drink and were tempted to lapse said that they would drink from the water-cart rather than take strong drink.

The first reference to it that I've found in print is from Alice Caldwell Hegan's comic novel Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch, 1901:

I wanted to git him some whisky, but hoe shuck his head. "I'm on the water-cart."

'Water-wagon' was soon used as an alternative and the distinction between the figurative phrase 'on the wagon' and real water-wagons was made clear in this piece from The Davenport Daily Leader, March 1904:

"Peter Solle took a bad fall from the water wagon this morning. The water wagon was not that imaginary, visionary affair that is sometimes applied to he who signs the pledge, but was the real thing, all there and big as life."

Water was considered unhealthy until modern municipal systems, filtering, and plumbing arrived -- and it often was, too. The germ theory of infection with disease began to take hold in the last two decades of the 1800s. Chlorination began in New Jersey in 1908 as a solution to the regular epidemics of cholera, dysntery, and typhoid that were a feature of life in the pre-industrial era. The EPA says that 90 percent of America's municipal water supply has been treated with chlorine.

AS to cold water, I'm talking about it as a pure sensation and taste treat. For just staying hydrated, I certainly agree that slightly warmer than ice cold is easier to drink. Very cold water constricts the muscles of the throat, making it harder to swallow. That's one reason runners prefer warm water to ice water during races.

New York's water has been called "The Champage of waters," and routinely ranks with or above branded bottled water in blind tastings. Though not everyone loves it, it should be remembered that one factor in its flavor when drawn from the tap is the plumbing of the building - up to a century old, and of varying quality. I don't care for overchlorinated water, but New York's water isn't that highly chlorinated: much less than many other municipalities, according to the NYDEP. It comes from a bucolic, mountainous watershed draining to the Hudson River Valley, and its natural filtering is so thorough that it actually does not need to be filtered before entering the city supply.

Where Does Your Drinking Water Come From? (EPA)

My water is in glaciers, which melt and eventually become the McKenzie River, one of the fastest and coldest in the U. S. It's very tasty.

Our water comes from our own deep, clear well. But we've been drinking even more water since we finally got around to having the cold water filter/ice maker hooked up in our fridge. The good thing is that the kid loves hitting the button, so she's drinking more than ever. Good habit to get into.

Frankly, though, I don't really like water. I know it sounds odd to dislike something so innocuous, but I only drink it when absolutely parched.

Years ago, during a very hot summer, I was briefly involved with a guy who ... well, to be brief, he was pretty much a total dick, but he had a really top of the line, high quality water filtration system, and when I went to visit him he'd serve me filtered water he'd stored in stainless steel flagons in his refrigerator, and I recall sitting and sipping it, in his hot squalid little apartment, and thinking it was one of the best things I'd ever tasted. (It is sort of pathetic when one's best memory of an affair involves a water filtration system, but there you are.)

"I'm sure there is great water available in Florida, considering the lushness and moisture of the climate."

Miko, I love it when you get all historical, and I was just playin' Google games with you up thread when I said we get our water piped down from North Carolina, not that you actually picked up on that. Our drinking water is only very indirectly dependent on the lushness of our climate, being mostly extracted from the Floridian Aquifier, which also supplies much of Georgia, and Alabama with drinking water. But you went right by my little red herring, and got all pedantic on my use of "waters." OK, we've got bathing springs, too. But what Ponce de Leon and bajillions of tourists after him, ever since, and 600 generations or so of Native Americans before him, were looking for when they got here, was a drink. Trust me. Everybody that comes here wants a drink, before they want a bath or a swim.

What rain does fall on North Florida that ever makes its way down into the Floridian, isn't ever pulled up again until below Orlando, as best anybody can tell. That's due to various faults in the limestone beds and the way fresh water moves more slowly in the southern half of the Floridian. Some geologists think it takes decades for rain that does recharge the Floridian around Gainsville, to ever make it as far south as even Lakeland. The main advantage of our normally high rainfall is to fill and wash out our surface waterways, and provide enough flow to keep our shallow coastal shelves and basins from experiencing excessive salinity. In other words, our fish mainly drink the rainfall, eventually, and people drink from wells.

To set the record straight from my little joke upthread, Jacksonville, NC gets its water from a 15 well farm near Richlands, NC, while we here in the City of Jacksonville, FL require a lot more than 15 wells, and would be nuts to pump water from nearly 500 miles away, like Yankees who live at the mouth of major rivers need to do. We can get all we want from the Floridian Aquifier 50 feet below us, and mix it with surface well water to lower the sulfate levels a bit (to keep newcomers from thinking our water "stinks" like sulfur water generally does), while keeping high levels of dissolved magnesium and calcium as carbonates, and natural flouride, as well as fairly high iron levels, and some arsenic. Our water has the distinctive taste of most North Florida well water, and is no good for making whiskey because of the iron, but is fine for making beer. And it's good in tea.

But it will leave spots on your car, and on glasses in your dishwasher. We don't really trust water that doesn't leave its mark, around here. It hasn't been anywhere interesting.

You put the "P" in pedantic, paulsc. But I'm not wrong about the "waters," regardless of how thirsty people might feel when they get to Florida. You just confused your point, that's all.

I also admit that I no longer click your links much. I pretty much assume most of your knowledge comes to us via Google (seems like that's why you self-correct and refine so much), so I figure I can search it myself.

IN fact, when I do search, I so often find stuff like this:

paulsc's paragraph:
Where I live in Jacksonville...our municipal water source is a well field of 15 deep sand wells near Richlands, North Carolina, where the water is naturally flouridated, and requires only a bit of chlorine be added for sanitation once we get it, so the water quality here is very good. The 15 wells draw their water from the Upper and Middle Cretaceous Sand Aquifers.

Source's paragraph: The City of Jacksonville draws its water from aquifers located deep underground. This ground water requires no treatment other than the addition of chlorine for disinfection. It contains natural fluoride, essential for dental health, and is naturally soft. Our water source is two well fields, one located off Gum Branch Road, and the other off Highway 258. Both well fields are located near Richlands, North Carolina. The 15 wells draw their water from the Upper and Middle Cretaceous Sand Aquifers.

Anyway, so much for my nice thread in praise of cool, clear water. Sigh.

I've been digging a drop or two of peppermint oil in my water lately.

Fresh mint is awesome, too.

Zip-guns and back-knives at twenty paces, folks. Ain't there room in this town for a Google-pup and a Wiki-hound both?

What the hell's a back-knife? And can I take one into the backyard and cut spearmint with it?

NYC water is good, not overly chlorinated I think, but I miss the water from my hometown in New Zealand. It tasted kind of... earthy somehow. Like you were drinking it out of a spring. I've never tasted public water anything quite like it.

Any knife is a back-knife if you stick it in the right place; you can cut spearmint with anything you want.

And yeah, I like NYC water, but mostly for what it does to the local Mountain Dew.

Usually, I just tear the spearmint leaves off with my bare hands, then crumble them up and sniff them contentedly. But when I looked up 'spearmint' on Wikipedia, I found a sentence that kinda confounds me.

"Its anti-androgenic properties reduce the level of free testosterone in the blood, while leaving total testosterone and DHEA unaffected."

I have no idea which city's water is better, Thessaloniki or Athens (though I should, I have a friend who is basically in charge of water in Thessaloniki), but the water there is incredibly hard; it clogs washing machines and dishwaters with mineral deposits, and leaves skin feeling very, very dry. I'm delighted with our new, softer water. As for taste... after the Brita, they both taste the same - damn good. Yay, water.

box:

Circulating (in the blood) testosterone is mainly bound to steroid-binding proteins. But when it's bound, it can't enter the cell and actually, you know, work. Total testosterone = bound + free (unbound). So the spearmint is altering the ratio of bound:unbound testosterone. So total is the same, it's just what there isn't able to have any biological effects.

DHEA is upstream in the testosterone synthesis pathway.

(wow, something I know).

So does that mean that putting peppermint in my water will make me less of a man?

(Biologically-speaking, that is. I already know that putting peppermint in my water will make me less of a man in a cultural sense.)

And thanks, gaspode. I had a feeling I could count on you.

I've been digging a drop or two of peppermint oil in my water lately.
posted by box 30 July | 12:57

Fresh mint is awesome, too.
posted by Miko 30 July | 12:57

Or slices of cucumber in pitchers of ice water. After years of seeing this in snooty cooking magazines and thinking "fffft, how pointless!" I tried it at the insistence of a friend. The water doesn't have any particular change in taste, it's just... softer, somehow.

When I was a tiny girl, I thought fairies drank dewdrops from grass blades in the dawn. Cucumber water tastes like that would.

Aren't I precious. Yick.