Sports Drink

Spouse Guy works out in the heat every day and goes through a lot of sports drinks such as Gatorade and Powerade. Those drinks get to be very expensive, especially if you buy them by the 32-ounce bottle. The powdered form is a little less expensive, but only comes in two or three flavors.

Instead of buying sports drink, I've been making it home for the last couple of years. Spouse Guy saves a couple of the bottles from the store-bought kind and refills them to take in his lunchbox (aka, a 12-pack sized cooler). The number of flavors is limited only by the combinations of Kool-Aid you can come up with.

The salt and potassium chloride is what makes this a sports drink and not just Kool-Aid. The orange juice is optional, but don't add it to grape or any other purplish drink mix. The memory of me making punch as a young teenager tells me that mixing orange and purple results in a tasty, but hideously ugly, army green drink.


Homemade Sports Drink

1 pkg. non-sweetened drink mix such as Kool-Aid
2/3 cup sugar
3/8 teaspoon salt
1/8 teaspoon salt substitute (potassium chloride)
1/2 cup orange juice (optional)

Combine all, then add cold water to make 2 quarts.

Double the batch using two different flavors of drink mix to create a new flavor.