Hot Summer Day Lemonade with San Diego Grown Lemons

With the latest heat wave sweeping through San Diego County once again, it only seems appropriate to give you our hot summer day lemonade recipe.

Lemons

Start with some medium to large lemons. If you’re at the La Mesa Farmers Market on Friday, Poway Farmers Market on Saturday or the Allied Gardens Sunday Market, you can get some good lemons for this recipe from Farmer Steve. Depending on the size of the lemons, Farmer Steve will give you about 6-10 lemons in a basket for $5.

Sweetener

We’ve tried this recipe with several different sweeteners. We like the raw, unfiltered honey best for this and generally use Nature Nate’s 100% Pure Raw & Unfiltered Honey 32-oz. Squeeze Bottle from Costco. However, unbleached, non-GMO cane sugar does the trick too (like the one from Zulka Morena). And replacing some of the honey or cane sugar with a little Stevia will work well too.

Secret Ingredient (well, not-so-secret-anymore now…)

The one ingredient that most people tend to forget is adding a pinch of salt. This seems to enhance all the flavors just a little bit. How much is a pinch? Ha! Generally, it’s supposed to be the amount that you can squeeze between your thumb and your index finger. For this recipe, I’ve found that 1/8 teaspoon of some Himalayan Pink Salt makes it just right.

Let’s do this!

This simple recipe goes as follows:

1. Take a 1/2-gallon container of drinking water
2. Take about 10 oz of the water out and make some ice cubes with it
   (see our ice section below)
3. to the water add:
   • 1 cup of cane sugar or honey
   • The juice of 2 1/2 lemons
   • 1 “pinch” of salt
4. Make sure everything is mixed well and dissolved
5. Add the ice cubes and Enjoy!

Lemonade Concentrate

In my house, everyone loves this recipe. Ironically, while I’m the one that makes it, I personally think it’s a little too strong. So, when I have glass of it, I actually fill my glass halfway and add the other half water. If you’re like me and you find this recipe to be too strong, consider using the same recipe, only this time use a full gallon of water to start with.

Ice Cubes

We like to play around with our ice cubes and use different shapes and sizes. These are some of the favorites that we’ve found on amazon. My favorite is the giant ice ball:

We’ve also enjoyed the Star Wars theme:

Feedback

We always welcome feedback. Please let us know how this recipe worked out for you or if you have one you would like us to try, or in general, if you just want to say hi.