About once a quarter, Mike and I commit to a little ‘liver rest’ by going on the wagon for a week or so. As we wrote in The 6-Week Cure, alcohol is a delicious poison that must be detoxified by the liver, which adds to its work burden. In excess, of course, alcohol, can lead to the development of fatty liver, which can fuel insulin resistance, mid-body weight gain, and any of the host of maladies that make up the syndrome. Thus the prescribed two-weeks of abstinence from alcohol that begin The Cure.

The hardest part of these self-prescribed interludes on the wagon, for me at any rate, is not being able on a sleepy Sunday morning to lingering over a couple of Mimosas (or Buck’s Fizzes as Mike prefers to call them) on our sunny deck overlooking Lake Tahoe or the equally sunny patio behind our house in Santa Barbara.

But last weekend, I found a really worthy substitute. I’m calling it a Cham-plain Mocktail. Ain’t nothing like the real thing, as the song says, but it’s slightly sweet and just bubbly and cold enough to fill in as a stunt Mimosa.

Here it is:

The Cham-plain Mocktail

In a chilled champagne flute, pour

1 ounce Citrus Pomegranate or Orange low cal FRS healthy energy beverage
4 ounces very cold sparkling water or club soda
Garnish with orange peel and/or a juicy berry

One can of low cal FRS –rich in antioxidants and B vitamins, so the label says — is enough to make about 5 or 6 Mocktails. Plenty to get us through brunch and the Sunday paper, with our livers none the worse for wear.

2 Comments

  1. FRS has sucralose and caffeine and the water is not filtered or distilled. All flavors contain concentrated fruit juice. I doubt that the advertised calorie content is so low. Citric Acid is also an ingredient. Most CItric Acid today comes from corn not citrus fruits. Arthur Daniels Midland is a major producer of Citric Acid. It is made by the fermentation of crude sugars. It is timely and expensive for the manufacturers to remove the protein. During processing the remaining protein is hydrolized which results in free glutamic acid or MSG.

  2. Cookie, Darlin’, I’m trying to imagine how you survive with your attitude. Evidently you are convinced that FRS contains muddy sewer water. And somehow citric acid is not citric acid, depending on which naughty corporation produced it. The good news? You can still drink the alcoholic mimosas. “In excess, of course, alcohol can lead to the development of fatty liver, which can fuel insulin resistance, mid-body weight gain, and any of the host of maladies that make up the syndrome.”

    I’ll take the muddy sewer water, thank you.

    Excessive sterility is the next plague.

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