If you'd like you can have those, sure.
Yes that level of cran juice intake is fine.
You can use white flour as a thickening agent, absolutely. You don't need to carry things that far and avoid stuff like that.
We don't know. We have people use caffeinated coffee just in case there is something pink about the caffeine, but many people do use decaf instead and I think it's plausible that it's the coffee itself, not the caffeine, that sways