One of the best ways to prevent taking ill is to make sure you are completely hydrated while at an event. That’s easily done by staying away from pop and drinking lots of water.

Still, water gets really boring after awhile. The solution? How about some switchel or shrub?

Switchel is mentioned a great deal in period cookbooks. The recipe is: equal parts of cider vinegar and a sweetener (molasses, honey, brown sugar, syrup). This makes a concentrate that does not need to be refrigerated.

Take two tablespoons of the concentrate and add to 1 cup cold water and you have a very refreshing drink.

If you don’t want to make the concentrate, the proportions are: 1/2 cup vinegar, 1/2 cup honey or any sweetener, and 1/2 gallon of water. You will have to keep this cold.

After the honey and vinegar is mixed with water, it will not keep for more than several days, but the concentrate of just vinegar and honey will keep for months unrefrigerated.

If you really want to get fancy, use raspberry vinegar in place of the cider vinegar and use honey, and mix in the same proportions as above. This is called raspberry shrub.

If you can’t find raspberry vinegar you can use raspberry pancake syrup as the sweetener and use cider vinegar. You can also flavor the plain vinegar and honey drink with mulling spices or mint.

I’ve made up the raspberry shrub recipe (finally found a use for that bottle of raspberry vinegar I bought on a whim years ago!). Although it may sound a bit odd, this really is a very refreshing beverage that has a bit of a zing to it. Maybe it’s the vinegar, but it does make the water seem cooler also.

This beverage replaces the electrolytes that the body loses in heat and it doesn’t have the slimy feel (nor sodium) of many of the commercial sports drinks.

Many long-time reenactors swear by this drink when it comes to preventing dehydration. Word of caution - don’t put a vinegar mixture in a metal canteen!