Lemonade

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Is it summer yet? Ah tomorrow is the first day (I asked Alexa). We had a preview of it last week with a couple days reaching close to 100° so I decided to make some Lemonade. It’s so refreshing and nothing matches fresh squeezed lemon juice. This is my favorite time of year here in Portland. The garden beds have been planted with four kinds of tomatoes, zucchini, three kinds of peppers, radishes and butter crunch lettuce + 2 kinds of basil. And, I put some potatoes in a bucket to see if I could grow them. Oh and pickling cucumbers, I’m super excited about that. A couple years ago we planted regular cucumbers and it produced so many cucumbers we couldn’t keep up, we offered some to our neighbors and they’re like no, no more cucumbers! lol. Ah! So it was 2015 not a couple years ago, I made a salad, a soup, Sesame Noodles with Cucumber and infused them in Vodka. I’ll call that the year of the cucumber. I hope this year will be the year of the tomato, for some reason our tomatoes didn’t do so well last year, very strange because they are usually the easiest to grow. We will see how it all turns out. The raspberries are just starting to ripen, and it looks like a good year for them, many many berries with more still blossoming. So you can count on a raspberry recipe soonish. Lemonade recipe below, I didn’t do any fancy infusing or anything, this is just your basic Lemonade, I used 3/4 cup of simple syrup but I think I could have gone with 1/2 cup, but it’s up to you and what you like. Enjoy!

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Lemonade

  • 1 cup fresh squeezed lemon juice. about 6 lemons

  • 3/4 cup simple syrup

  • 3-4 cups water

Add lemon juice, simple syrup and 3 cups of water to a pitcher, stir and taste, add more water or simple syrup as needed. I didn’t use a whole cup of syrup and I thought it was sweet enough. So best to build up the flavors and taste to your liking. I ended up using 3.5 cups water.

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