Not that this is terribly interesting but my small rural town has been on a "boil water" alert for three (yes, THREE) weeks now because of high levels of E Coli. Well, who the heck has time to boil gallons and gallons of water. I'd rather just buy tons-of-gallons of bottled spring water.
Water is something you depend on for life itself in so many ways. You use it for drinking, brushing teeth, even my cat's water dish. I'm so weird that even though when you cook pasta or frozen vegetables the water is -- obviously -- boiling, I still prefer to use bottled spring water.
Anyway, this is just an observation I've made. Now that I've been using bottled spring water for making ice cubes, I notice the cubes are A LOT clearer. They no longer look all clouded but are now, in fact, almost (not totally, of course) crystal clear.
I just thought I'd mention that. You might want to make your ice look more "pure" when you put it out in the ice-bucket at your next gathering...
I filter my drinking/cooking water in a Brita water pitcher. I replace the filters quarterly, whether they need it or not. Ice cube trays are filled from that. In light of recent events I also keep between 5 and 10 gallons stored in gallon juice jugs, and 1 and 2 liter bottles and rotate them.
As to the ecoli, I believe there are water filters, for campers and hikers and such that will eliminate little critters like that. For under a $100 it beats boiling water. Here's one site: http://usachppm.apgea.army.mil/WPD/CompareDevices.aspx. Lots of good information.
Posted by: Jim at October 21, 2006 05:49 PMThe reason the cubes are clearer with the bottled waster is the little aerator attachment on the tap. There are less dissolved gasses in the bottled water to form microscopic bubbles int he ice cube when it freezes.
Posted by: drstrangegun at October 24, 2006 06:04 PM