Best Lemonade Ever

We live in a small Spanish Colonial Revival bungalow from the late 1920s. It's in the historic district of our little town. Now, being from the East Coast, I find it amusing that 1920s qualifies as historic. The house I grew up in was built in the 1800s. And people whose lifetimes overlap mine were born in the 1920s. Anyway, until 1998, the family that had the house built originally (for something like $3000) still lived in the house. They had three children, which is amazing, since the house has 1 bathroom, 2 bedrooms, and is less than 900 square feet. One of these three is a local avocado rancher named Kermit (he's in his 70s), and he comes by now and again to check on things. Sentimental attachment to the house. And vested interest in our persimmon tree. And that works out fine for us. In exchange for allowing him to harvest and sell our persimmons, he drops by about once a month with fresh produce and sometimes pictures or stories about the house. It's wonderful. Yesterday, he stopped by with a honeydew melon, and a small box of avocadoes and lemons.

Today, when I saw the pile of beautiful lemons, I decided I needed to make some lemonade. We are between batches of oranges and I was craving some citrus juice. Our grapefruit tree doesn't produce fruit yet. I put Jake on the kitchen counter with his bare feet dangling into the sink. We washed the lemons together and splashed the water around. Jake was very good about handing the lemons to me one at a time. Then we cut them all in half and put them in a bowl. He handed the halves to me and I juiced them and handed them back for him to throw in the trashcan (like attempting to score in a basketball game, with cheering included at each success). It was fun. I did the rest of the lemonade making unsupervised.

Rather than winging it, I looked up a recipe on the internet. I'm so glad I did, because I would have just juiced the lemons, added some sugar and tried to drink the conconction. But that's not how lemonade is made. Here's the yummy recipe I found:

Best Lemonade Ever
Submitted by: Jo

"This is a very refreshing drink!"

Original recipe yield: 20 (4 ounce) servings.
Prep Time:
30 Minutes
Cook Time:
5 Minutes
Ready In:
4 Hours 35 Minutes
Servings:
20 (change)

INGREDIENTS:
1 3/4 cups white sugar
8 cups water
1 1/2 cups lemon juice

DIRECTIONS:
In a small saucepan, combine sugar and 1 cup water. Bring to boil and stir to dissolve sugar. Allow to cool to room temperature, then cover and refrigerate until chilled.
Remove seeds from lemon juice, but leave pulp. In pitcher, stir together chilled syrup, lemon juice and remaining 7 cups water.