Sunday, January 27, 2008

8-2-1 Lemonade


Sometimes life gives you lemons. Cliché as it may sound; some recent lemon gifts inspired me to make lemonade. The recipe (a simple ratio really) of water/lemon juice/sugar also arrived from friends, as a housewarming present during the summer. It was such a pleasure to receive a beautiful glass bottle, corked, with fresh cold lemonade inside… mmm. Immediately on receiving their gift I brewed some tea for teamonade (aka Arnold Palmer?), a favorite of mine, another option for enjoying this simple and fast recipe.

Transforming lemons to lemonade also seems appropriate for the first post on this site as a metaphor for life in my kitchen and home. We are in the midst of an experiment: attempting to live our life fully without allowing our budget to control our happiness. Sounds grand, but really, can it be done? First off, can we live within our budget? Then can we eat organic food? Local food? shop at the farmer’s market? – all the things we hold as ideals - but sound, well, out of budget.

So the lemonade. I saved the cute blue cork and bottle from the housewarming gift, and found additional corks at Bed Bath and Beyond for $2.95, and with a 20% coupon (which NEVER expire, so always good to keep a stash around) they were too good to pass up. Also of note here is the benefit of storing juice in a glass container versus plastic, for health reasons, and the simple satisfaction and beauty of pouring juice from a cold glass bottle. Fantastic.

8-2-1 Lemonade

Servings: 10+ cups
Cost: $0.24 ($0.03 per cup) (Lemons gratis)
Time: 20 minutes (includes time to make lemon juice from hand juicer)

It really doesn’t get much simpler than this – many lemonade recipes start with sugar syrup, but I had no problem with the white refined sugar dissolving in the lemon water mixture. Also when you are figuring out quantities .... I found that one medium small ripe lemon yields approximately 1/8 cup juice.

8 cups water
2 cups fresh squeezed lemon juice
1 cup white refined sugar

Stir in a juice container until well mixed and sugar well incorporated. Enjoy.






3 comments:

sam said...

Hooray for the fifties housewife with a blog! I made your lemonade recipe for my baby shower on Sunday. I thought it sounded like too much sugar, so I added slowly and kept tasting it. Your recipe was right on. Some suggested twists on the recipe: I like using honey instead of sugar (although does that take the "thrifty" out of the equation?) and mint when I have it in my garden. Looking forward to moving on to some of your more challenging recipes!

Anonymous said...

Hurray! Now I have something to do with all of my lemons. An idea: if you don't want to go to Bed Bath & Beyond for a stopper, The Pasta Shop (off of 4th Street in Berkeley) has 1 liter glass bottles with stoppers for $2.25 each. They are provided for the bulk olive oil they sell, but will sell them empty too.

Emily said...

Sam - I am so stoked you tried the lemonade! I was inspired by your suggestion to try it with honey... I cut the sugar in half, then added honey to taste.... "honey lemonade", if you will. I also added some juice from some tangerines I had... yum. I need to plant some mint around here ... that sounds good to!
Julia - I can't wait to go to the Pasta Shop and check this out.. .I am eyeing my olive oil as it dwindles, and wondering if it would be "thrifty" to buy some bulk olive oil from the pasta shop? mmm?