Lemonade.

As an incentive for Tim to stop drinking as much pop and Country Time lemonade, I decided a while ago that I would start making him homemade lemonade.  It's funny that these days the thought of fresh lemonade is so novel.  If you stop and think of how strange and mysterious (and I don't mean that in a good way!) Coke or lemon-flavoured sugar crystals are, maybe I can entice you to try making homemade lemonade one day soon.  I promise you won't be disappointed.

The easiest way to make lemonade is if you have a juicer, but it's not a necessity at all.  If you don't have one, cut your lemons in half, poke the hell out of the flesh, then squeeze the juice into a bowl, then pour the juice into a jug, making sure to strain out the seeds (I do so using the tines of a fork when I am too lazy to use my juicer).  I normally use a juicer I got from London Drugs for $15.00 that looks kind of like the one to the left, except for not as nice looking. I've washed its parts on the lower rack of my dishwasher and melted them a bit so now all the plastic parts are warped.  That's fine, it still works, even if it's not pretty.  If you don't have a juicer, you may have to do a bit more squeezing, but it's really not that hard.  The ratios are 1 lemon: 1/6 cup (about 2 and 1/2 tablespoons) sugar: 1-2 cups of water, depending on how thirsty you are.  Tim like his watered down a bit, I like mine really sour.

My best advice for incorporating something like fresh juices (of any type, not just lemonade, although I personally like it the best for this purpose) into your life, is to make a bunch at a time and put it in separate containers in advance, if possible.  I tend to make about six lemons worth, so each batch contains:

1. 6 lemons
2. 12 cups of water
3. 1 cup of sugar

From those three simple ingredients we get four half litre bottles and about half a jug of lemonade.  I like to store about half of the lemonade in the glass Avalon milk bottles that we reuse, so that Tim can take a nice cool bottle of lemonade with him when he's out on the road driving for work.  I must admit, I get sort of excited when I look in the fridge and see this:

In a burst of inspiration, I added the juice from four key limes to the bottle with the green lid (yes, I'm still trying to get rid of all the key limes I bought two weekends ago!). Tim tried it out and said it was delicious.  Maybe I'll start making limeade...