RCP: lemonade

In this hot weather, let's recall a fave:

1c. sugar
2c. water
pinch of salt

Make simple syrup. Let cool.

5 limes
5 lemons
3c. water

Juice the fruit, removing pips but keeping pulp. Combine syrup, juice, and water. Lemonade will be zippy.

Serve over ice. Garnish with a paper-thin slice of citrus and a sprig of lavender.

[Jenise]

Oh perfect, I will need this in about three hours!

Here (in Israel) a generous helping of freshly cut spearmint (nana) is traditionally added to lemonade. Yum!

Yoni - I wonder if mint would works as well. I have tons of it.

Hi Jon,

It certainly wouldn't hurt to try the mint. I'm not even positive that our nana is an exact equivalent of spearmint; that is a question best asked of Rogov or a local botanist . (Nana is so ubiquitous here that a local yahoo-like Internet portal carries that as its name!) Unfortunately, we're seeing a lot less fresh lemonade this summer as the price of lemons has climbed to above 20 shekels ($5.80 USD) per-kilo...

[Jenise]

Yoni - I wonder if mint would works as well. I have tons of it.

Yoni's right, English mint and spearmint aren't the same, but mint is no less delicious with lemon. Or lime. Mojitos, right?

(Speaking of hot weather fruit drinks, my friend Susan make some really delicious margaritas last week: frozen limeade, 7-up, Corona beer and tequila. Easy and good with a nice complexity from the addition of the beer.)

Yoni, then what's "menta" as opposed to "nana?"

Hi Leanne,

Good question...

Menta appears to be peppermint (Mentha piperita), while nana is spearmint. Colloquially, the two terms are used almost interchangeably. The two applications (that I can think of) where people care to distinguish are (1) chewing gum and (2) medicinal uses.