Life Gives You Lemons, You Should Be Happy...

I love lemons. Love them. Love the smell and love the taste. On more than one occasion while visiting in Portugal, I have been offered some lovely, ice cold lemonade. Either from a store bought concentrate or homemade from scratch. And even though it's a natural choice to cool yourself with on a scorching July afternoon, I personally could drink it every day, rain or shine. And while there are many different ways of making it, this is how I make mine.

Take some lemons. Obvious,eh. I usually use around four or five at a go.You might want to scrub them, depending on where you got yours from. I might not scrub the ones coming from my Father-in-Laws garden, but I will certainly do so to the ones bought from a supermarket here. After that, peel the yellow lovelies and put about half of the peel on the bottom of a jug. Note though that you will be pouring boiling water into the jug so choose one that will not break when you do so. Then squeeze the lemons and add the juice into the jug on top of the peel. Next, add slightly less than a cup of sugar into the mixture. You can put more or less sugar according to your taste, personally I like mine quite sour. Lemony, that is. Boil about 1.5 liter of water and pour on top of everything. Cover the jug and let it cool. Once the juice is cool enough, pour it through a sieve and store in a jar. When you want to serve the lemonade, put half juice, half sparkling mineral water in a serving jug. Add some ice cubes and you're done. This last step is my addition, as I want some bubbles in my lemonade, but if you want yours still, just skip this and add plain water. 

As you can see, I had a little three-year-old helper. The squeezing is her favorite part,and it's not restricted to lemons. She also loves squeezing tomatoes, cucumbers and bananas on that little squeezer of hers. :)