Mardi Gras Punch (Recipe)

Ingredients

1 6-ounce can frozen orange juice concentrate thawed
1 6-ounce can frozen lemonade concentrate, thawed
1 cup water
Fruit pieces, such as cut-up oranges, strawberries, limes and/or whole blueberries
1 quart chilled apple juice
2 quarts chilled ginger ale

Steps

1. Combine the orange juice and lemonade concentrates.  Refrigerate half the concentrate mixture.  To the remaining half, add the water.  Make ice cubes with the pieces of cut-up fruit and the concentrate-water mixture.

2. To serve: In a large punch bowl, stir together the chilled juice concentrates and the apple juice.

3. Slowly pour the ginger ale down the side of the punch bowl.  Add the fruit filled ice cubes and serve.

Tips:

To make the ice cubes with a special touch, place the bite-size pieces of fruit into each section of an ice-cube tray.  Then pour in some of the orange juice-lemonade mixture.  Freeze the ice cubes overnight.

Forgot to make the ice cubes ahead of time?  No problem.  Spoon scoops of your favorite sherbet into the punch instead.

To make this punch n advance of the party, combine all the ingredients except the ice cubes and ginger ale in a large punch bowl and chill the mixture until serving time.  Then add the ginger ale and ice cubes when you are ready to serve the punch.