I’m from the south, Texas to be specific. When I think summer, I think iced tea and lemonade – even mixed together they’re wonderful.
I have to confess, though, that it makes me shudder a bit when I see powdered lemonade. Lemonade is very easy to make from scratch, no harder than mixing the powdered version, so I’m not sure why you wouldn’t make your own and know exactly what’s in it. We’re lucky enough to have a lemon tree out back that’s just now recovering from a lack of water. If you don’t have a tree, look for larger lemons in the store and squeeze them yourself.
I use the manual juicer pictured that I got off of E-Bay. We had a red one growing up, and I remember using that one to make lemonade. My mom still has it, actually. There are some rumors that someone in my family was involved in the patent, and that a copy of said patent was lost in a house fire. (That reminds me, I need to ask my mom for details…)
But onto the recipe, such as it is. I like my lemonade tart, so I use a little less water and sugar. Start with less and add more until it’s how you like it.
[recipe title=”Lemonade” time=”15-20 minutes” difficulty=”easy”]
Ingredients:
- Enough lemons to make 2 cups of juice (usually somewhere between 8-16, depending on how large and how much juice is in each one)
- 10 cups water
- 2 cups of sugar (adjust up or down to taste)
To make dissolving the sugar easier, you can heat the 2 cups of the water to a simmer in a pot and mix in the sugar until it dissolves. (Or, like me, because I don’t care for doing extra dishes, you can stir the sugar in like mad until it dissolves at the end.)
Squeeze enough lemons to get 2 cups of juice.
Pour lemon juice into a pitcher and add sugar/water mixture and rest of water or (if lazy like me) add water, then stir in sugar until it dissolves. I generally start with about 1 1/2 cups sugar and keep adding little bit by little bit until I think it tastes good.
Makes: 3 quarts
[/recipe]