Wednesday, August 10, 2011

Tasty Tuesday: Lemonade

I. love. lemons. I drink lemon water all the time. I love anything lemon flavored. I will sometimes eat a plain lemon. (Odd, huh?) If you recall, I'm not the only one with this passion though. 

Still, Zac and I are not the only two who love the tartness of the citrus fruit. Alyssa drinks lemon water quite often as well. Her absolute favorite drink though? Lemonade.


 Ingredients:
1 3/4 cups white sugar
1 cup water
1 1/2 cups lemon juice

Directions:
1. In a small saucepan, combine sugar and 1 cup water. Bring to boil and stir to dissolve sugar. Allow to cool to room temperature, then cover and refrigerate until chilled.
2. Remove seeds from lemon juice, but leave pulp. In pitcher, stir together chilled syrup, lemon juice and remaining 7 cups water.


If you're strapped for time (even though the stove method takes only 5 minutes), or if you don't want to dirty an extra dish, you can make the simple syrup in the microwave in just a minute or two.

   
I always make lemonade by hand-juicing the lemons. That produces plenty of pulp. Yum! But Jacob hates pulp. Despises pulp. He calls it hairs and spits the juice out, making a horrid face. This time, I decided to use the juicer that I stole borrowed from my parents. The kids had a blast juicing and Jacob got pure, hairless juice.


Warning - not everyone is as fanatical about straight lemon juice as I am!

This did not stop the two of them from passing the glass back and forth sipping the tart juice and making us all laugh at their silly faces.


It also ensured that I had to peel more lemons since we no longer had enough juice. In the end, I used nine lemons. 


Once you have your simple syrup and lemon juice ready, combine them with the remaining water and stir. Add some ice and you're all set to enjoy a refreshing drink!

Now all I need is a book and a hammock . . . 

Oh, and a babysitter. Anyone free to watch three adorable, obedient, mannerly, polite, well-behaved, calm, angelic, quiet . . . Oh, who am I kidding? Anyone want to watch some loud, crazy kids???

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