Lemonade

With the fair recently in town, I once again succumbed to the allure of freshly squeezed lemonade.  Why, oh why is that stuff so fabulously good- so much so that I’ll pay any price for a glass full of this delightfully sweet lemon concoction.  Here in the Midwest where citrus doesn’t come easy or cheap, real fresh lemonade is insanely hard to come by.  Most lemonade here is made from a concentrate or a powder.  While it’s good, it really isn’t the same.  So I paid close attention to the process this year and came home and devised my own homemade lemonade.  By golly, if it ain’t the best thing ever!

The very first step to making your own lemonade is to make a simple syrup.  Wait! Don’t run- I promise, this is way easier than I even thought it could be.  First, you’re going to get a saucepan out and set it on the stove.  To this pan add 1 cup of plain white sugar. Next, add 1 cup of water.  With me so far?  Okay, now turn on the burner to about medium heat and give it a stir.  We’re going to keep cooking and stirring from time to time until we don’t see any more sugar crystals.  You don’t need to babysit the pot, by all means, keep yourself busy, coming back to stir once or twice, but this shouldn’t take much more than about 5 minutes.  We’re not even looking for a simmer or a boil, we simply want the sugar and the water to meld together.  Voila- simple syrup.  Take this off the stove and let it cool.  Once made and cooled, this will keep in the refrigerator for…well, I have no idea.  Just put it in a jar, cover it and you have simple syrup in the fridge for making lemonade.

So now you have your syrup.  Now you can make a glass of lemonade with one lemon.  So we’re going to do just that- we’re going to make one 16-ounce glass of lemonade. But wait! I happen to have a few raspberries just sitting here, so we’re also going to get fancy and make raspberry lemonade.  Feel free to leave them out, or sub in your favorite fruit or berry. Strawberry? Peach? Blueberry? Those all sound good to me!

The first step is to juice your lemon.  You can use a juicer, or one of those little hand held juicers, but you know what I use?  A fork.  I cut the lemon in half, stick a fork straight into the pulp and then squeeze around the lemon.  It works beautifully.  You want to squeeze both halves of their juice.  Dump this into your glass- straining out the seeds if you’d like.  I don’t bother, but that’s just me.  Next, you’re going to add one of your squeezed out lemon halves.  Trust me on this.  It adds something- just drop your freshly squeezed half down into the glass and be happy about it. Now here’s where we get exciting.  Grab about 6 raspberries (or a few pieces of something else) and drop that onto your lemon half.

Now you’re going to grab something to muddle with.  You can use the back of a wooden spoon, an actual muddler, or if you have a useless little mini-tart shaper that you never use- guess what? You’ve just found a use for it.  Use your tool of choice to squish those vibrant berries into your lemon half and lemon juice. You can really have fun with this- squish as much as you’d like.

Now you need to get out your sugar syrup.  Add just over two tablespoons of syrup to your glass- more if you like it sweeter, but I found two tablespoons, plus a “sploosh” was perfect.  Stir the syrup into your juicy mess at the bottom of your glass.  Now grab a handful of ice from the freezer and add that to your glass.  The last step is simply “just add water”.  Fill your glass with water, give it a stir, add a straw, and just like that, you have a glass of the best lemonade ever.  No, really.  It’s that good.  Give it a try and you’ll thank me for it later.