to the market! Quick! (Strawberry Lemonade)

Where we live, we're at the glorious intersection of strawberry season and local lemon season.

If you get where I'm headed with this, you might be able to understand how truly addicted I've become to my homemade concoction of strawberry lemonade.  

I love making this because the ingredients are so honest and so easy.  Plus, my kids help, it's fun to do together and it's delicious.  So very delicious.

The first step is an important one - before strawberry season is over, go ahead and buy 6 or 7 pounds of strawberries.  [Don't know about all you guys living in the Land of the Free, but strawberries were running us about 60 cents a pound recently.]

After you wash your strawberries, put them in a blender with the filter on.  You want to get a nice puree that's minus seeds and weird stuff.  

I put in 1 1/2 cups of strawberries and puree it up, then stick that amount of juice in a ziploc bag.  My six or seven pounds of strawberries made 8-9 nice bags of strawberry puree.  Now that my freezer is nicely stocked, I'll be making strawberry lemonade for guests long after the last strawberry is sold at the market.  And since strawberry season is winding down, I'd suggest you go now to buy some!

Local lemons are cheap now too, and make your house smell super clean and fresh while you whip up this tasty drink.   Call your kiddos around the table and give each of them a lemon (or two, depending on how many kids you have! hahah! I use 4 lemons.)  Have them roll it around on the table to get it nice and warmed up.  Cut your lemon in half and ask your children to use their superpower strength to squeeze all the juice out.    

Abby particularly loves this part.  Her eyes bug out and her veins start to show, but she always asks to help with the squeezing part.

You'll want to strain out all the seeds and pulp.

I'm not super particular about measuring; I just use whatever juice came from those four lemons.

I add 1/3 of a ziploc bag of strawberry puree to the lemon juice.  [My pitcher is too small to make a large batch of lemonade, so I have to make two smaller batches.  One ziploc bag of strawberry puree will make me two batches of lemonade, then I add the final 1/3 to something Silas is eating - mangoes, bananas, applesauce, etc.]

Then I add a cup of sugar.  (I do realize if I die an early death, it will be because I've fallen in love with Strawberry Lemonade.)

Then I add 2 1/2 cups of water.

Stir well.  Prepare for bliss.

Recap, since I tend to ramble a bit:

Strawberries - 1.5 cup halved strawberries, throw into the blender, pureed.  Use only 1/3 of this (or more, depending on what taste you're going for.)

Lemons - 4, squeezed and strained.

Sugar - 1 cup

Water - between 2-2.5 cups (start with 2 and then add water til you get the taste you want.)

Stir well.

(If I had a large pitcher, I'd use 2/3 of the strawberry lemonade, 8 lemons, 2 c sugar and more water.)