Hey guys, Well it's been roasting here and I bought a load of drinks yesterday to help quench my thirst; mineral water, juice, soft drinks etc.

No problem with that, or with buying something slightly stronger when needed too

However, something crossed my mind that I hadn't thought of before. Has anyone seen squash or cordial drinks anywhere i.e. Ribena, robinsons or equivalent. I get sick of plain water, expensive juice and sugary soft drinks and have a yearning for some squash that I can just add water to.

All I can find is revolting stuff like cool-aid. Any ideas ??

Only British stores...

I've seen both lime and blackcurrant cordial with the drinks mixers in safeway. However, I usually just ask people to bring a bottle of Robinsons when they visit (I think you can get that on-line now-a-days too)

I see Ribena in Loblaws. Rose's Lime cordial is common too.

Some people have found alternatives and mentioned them in other threads. If they don't pop up soon, try a search of the threads.

Not really a North American thing, the option here is things like Tang that you dissolve in water.

You could try this place - apparently they will mail all over Canada

http://www.uktreats.com/

You can get Ribena in both Superstore and Costco.

What I tend to do for the kids is to buy the frozen juice concentrates and dilute those. They do both pure juice and fruit "punch". the punch is pretty equivalent to squash imo. I usually dilute it a bit more than the instructions say, and each frozen can makes up about 1.5 L of the drink and I store it in a big jug in the fridge.

I have found Ribena in a lot of supermarkets ! only found Robinsons, Vimto etc at the British stores !

The reason north american fridges are huge is to provide room for jugs of cool aid and fruit punch (from frozen concentrate)etc


At least with the powdered cool aid type things you control how much sugar your kids get... There are so many varieties it must be pretty hard to not find one thats palatable.

There are squash type drinks out there, but they are not concentrates, they are already to drink, so not quite the same.

I quite like the Lipton ice tea powder. I've been looking for the concentrated Tetley ice tea in liquid tabs - anyone seen it in stores yet? Not at my local loblaws.

What about Crystal Clear give that a shot - it's aimed at women and makes your water turn into something that looks radioactive

Safeway sell orange and lemon squash.

Ribena's readily available in most supermarkets.

That Lipton stuff is pretty good, the Crystal Clear ones taste way too chemically

The problem I have with koolaid is that you can use it to dye wool.

if it can do that, can you just imagine what it does to your insides

Actually, I don't like my kids having too many additives, so don't use koolaid at all for that reason. You might be able to control the amount of sugar, but what about all the artificial colourings and flavourings it contains?

I dont much care what colour my insides are as they are full of shit anyway...but point taken. Its not like orange squash is a stranger to artificial colourings anyway.

The crystal lite stuff mentioned earlier is colourless I believe.

Either has to be better than "Sunny D" anyway My kids drink watered down fruit juice (Canned or concentrate) 99% of the time for what thats worth. We do make our own lemon cordial from time to time, and orange works just as well, and its not all that hard to make to be honest...

I do the orange juice thing as well - and also use the frozen grapefruit and apple juices.

They also love home-made iced tea made with those fruit teabags and I make lemonade for them when I can be bothered.

Beyond that it is milk or water.

I stopped buying ribena for them because they could go through a bottle in a single day. I couldn't afford it!