Originally published on Tasteful Diversions June 14, 2011.
As a child of the 80s, I’ve always been about convenience and speed. Powdered drink mixes always seemed like the easiest way to get a nice refreshing pitcher of lemonade, and it tasted okay. When my kids got old enough to start eating and drinking real food, I started looking at the ingredients in foods and resolved to make from scratch as much as possible. Sometimes this is an utter failure. For instance, one of the few things The Girl will eat are chicken fingers. She will not eat any other form of chicken, even if I’ve made it look just like the prepackaged chicken fingers. I heartily wish that she had never been introduced to the pre-made crap, but it happened and I’m sure eventually we’ll get her to start eating something else. Maybe when she goes to college.
But I digress. I started looking for a lemonade recipe last year — I figured it would be a pain, but worth it to keep the chemicals going into the kids down to a minimum. I was surprised — and a little annoyed at myself for not figuring it out earlier — to find out how incredibly easy it is…almost as easy as fixing one of the powdered mixes. It’s so easy, in fact, that I almost feel silly writing up the recipe.
- 1 cup boiling water
- 1 cup sugar
- 1 cup lemon juice (fresh squeezed is best, but you can use bottled, too)
- 2 cups ice
- 1 quart cold water
- Combine boiling water and sugar.
- Stir until sugar is completely dissolved (the water will become clear again — yay! You’ve just made simple syrup!).
- Stir in lemon juice.
- Put ice in pitcher.
- Add half the cold water.
- Pour in lemon juice mixture.
- Top off with remaining cold water.
- Stir.
- Serve over ice.
