A steady rain this evening. Showers continuing overnight. Thunder possible. Low 58F. Winds SW at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 90%..
A steady rain this evening. Showers continuing overnight. Thunder possible. Low 58F. Winds SW at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 90%.
There are many things that I consider to be good to enjoy year-round. Christmas trees, for example, but only if you decorate them appropriately for each season. Roasted turkey and my mom’s doctored-up Stove Top dressing. Twinkle lights strung on your porch or patio roof (no matter what Terri says on the subject).
But I have some hard and fast rules about appropriate drinks to have during certain seasons. There are just some drinks that should remain in the season with which they are associated, and no other time. Like for winter, I love a mug of peppermint hot chocolate, which I make with Keurig cups in a copper mug, and then add a few mini- marshmallows for funsies. And I have one glass of eggnog at Christmas, then stare at the nearly-full carton all winter in the fridge until I finally throw it away.
Then when fall comes, I’m an apple cider person, because nothing says fall like a bite in the air and your hands wrapped around an artisanal, hand- thrown mug of super-hot spicy cider with a cinnamon stick stirrer. And if you’re so inclined, apple cider lends itself well to mixing with spirits, and I’m not talking about the kind that roam the earth on Halloween night.
But my favorite season-specific drink has to be strawberry lemonade. Now I know that they sell strawberry lemonade year-round in restaurants, fast food places, and the supermarket. But that’s premade, frozen stuff, and its fine in a pinch. But there is nothing like summer-time strawberry lemonade, made with red berries and bright lemons, enough simple syrup to take the tart edge off, and served as cold as you can get it.
And because I want all y’all to have a good summer, and because I’m hoping someone will drop off a gallon of this to the office, so I don’t have to make it myself, I’m going to share with you my extremely easy method for a strawberry lemonade you’ll want in your fridge until fall. And I mean only until fall; after that, you need to switch your drinks to ciders and hot coffees, because like Walmart flip- flops and white pants, strawberry lemonade season ends at Labor Day. Sorry, them’s the Seasonal Rules.
To start with, you’re going to make a simple syrup. Some of y’all are going to ask “Why can’t I just use regular sugar?” to which I’m going to reply like your mom did when you were growing up with, “Because I said so.” So let’s avoid that whole discussion by you getting a cup of white sugar and a cup of tap water and putting it in a saucepan. Put that saucepan on medium-high on the stove burner, and stir the sugar around until it dissolves totally. I let my syrup come to a boil, let it boil hard for maybe three minutes, and then take it off the heat. You aren’t making caramel here, so don’t let it boil forever; you just want the sugar to dissolve entirely. Set the sugar syrup aside to cool for a few hours, or do what I do and make it the night before, then put it in a mason jar in the fridge. It’ll keep in the fridge for a month.
Now, go to the grocery store or farmers market and get yourself whatever strawberries and lemons look best. I usually get 2 quarts of strawberries and one of those pre-bagged bags of lemons (I think there’s like eight or ten to a bag), but you can get just about any amount of either. Strawberry lemonade is to taste, so your proportions will be to your personal taste.
When you get home, wash your berries and lemons off (no need to dry them), then find yourself your favorite paring knife (that’s the little one in your knife block), and settle in for some chopping. Some people like to chop up their strawberries real fine, puree them in a blender, and then run them through a fine-mesh strainer to get the seeds out. That’s already way too many steps for me, mostly because there’s nothing I hate more than having to wash a blender, so all I do is cut off the green tops, slice the red parts up, give them a vaguely rough chop so the pieces are bite-size, then toss them into a waiting bowl.
Then I move onto the lemons. There are machines that could juice my lemons more easily, but I prefer just using one of those inexpensive silver lemon juicers that have the juicer part on top, holes that catch the juice, and then a bowl underneath that you collect the juice in, and I stabilize it by putting it on top of a tea towel on top of my counter. But however, you like to juice lemons, you do it. Strawberry lemonade tastes its best when you’ve enjoyed making it, not when you’ve fought lemons for an hour.
So, roll your lemons around on the counter (don’t ask me why this helps produce more juice, but the Food Network says it does), slice your lemons in half, then commence juicing until you’ve juiced every lemon you have. Check your juice for stray lemon seeds, and then set it aside a moment.
Now, the thing about specialty drinks is that to make them worth the effort of making, you want to make a lot at once and keep it accessible. I recommend storing your strawberry lemonade in one of two ways: a pitcher with a good lid, or an empty gallon milk jug (you can buy empty ones in the water aisles at just about any store). I like a milk jug because I will invariably forget to tighten my pitcher lid while pouring and half my lemonade will end up on the kitchen floor, and I’ll spend the rest of the evening trying to de-stick my tile before the ants find out and come running.
If you go the milk jug route, please invest in a funnel: they are a cheap gift you will thank yourself for later. Into the jug through the funnel, I put in all my strawberries, then all my lemon juice, and then about a quarter cup of the cooled simple syrup. Now add plain water until about three- quarters of the jug is filled up. Give it a shake to incorporate your ingredients, and then pour yourself a tester. If it’s too tart, add some more simple sugar (like an eighth of a cup at a time), and then some more water. I like my lemonade on the sweeter side, but you’re going to be drinking this for at least a week, so you get it where you like it. If you accidentally gotten it too sweet, try adding more water, but I’ve never had a lemonade that was “too sweet” so I can’t really help you there.
Once you’ve got the taste where you like it, pop on your milk jug lid and put it in the coldest part of your fridge and let it get as cold as possible before you get into it again. Some people might be tempted to pour it over ice and get drinking, but I don’t like how ice can water down lemonade, and I just went to a lot a trouble to make sure all those proportions were right, so I’d rather just wait till the next day. That then gives me plenty of time to decide which of my favorite summer-time glasses I’m going to drink it out of: one of the stemless kind with stars, or maybe one of my travel mugs, like my West Virginia one from Simply Southern? Because drinking from a glass you think is pretty somehow makes even ordinary drinks seem that much tastier.
And because like all things summer- time, the season for strawberry lemonade is fleeting, and you should enjoy it to its fullest, from picking your own berries to choosing a fun glass to drink it with, to inviting friends to have a glass while porch- sitting and watching a summer storm start to build on the horizon. After all, summer is all about experiences, don’t you know?
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