Squeezing Lemons in the Squeezer Thing

The season of squeezing lemons for lemonade is back again! Granted-these days all you have to do is go to the frozen food aisle, pick up some cans, bring them home, open them up, put the frozen concentrate in a pitcher, add water, stir, add ice if you want, and there you have it-Lemonade. You can purchase pink lemonade or limeade-even ice tea. Or-You can buy all those varieties packaged in a carton or glass container. No concentrate to bother with-it's ready to serve. Even the Paul Newman brand offers lemonade, limeade and ice tea.

But my favorite brand remains Homemade Lemonade. My grandmother made it as did my mother and aunts. They each had a favorite glass pitcher for lemonade that never came from a can or container. It came from slicing real, hold-in-your-hand lemons and squeezing the juice out by using a thick glass-lemon-squeezer thing. It was odd-shaped but it worked.That's what they all used. You'd hold on to it with one hand and with the other put a lemon half in place one-by-one. By moving the half lemon back and forth, around and around-out came the juice. After squeezing a few you'd dump the juice into the pitcher and repeat the process. You could leave the seeds or take them out. They knew how many lemons equaled how much water and sugar to add. I know they did because every single time they made their lemonade, it was as perfect as the time before. I don't remember a measuring cup being used. They just knew.

My mother sometimes added lime juice-after squeezing limes. She'd even slice a lemon and maybe a lime and place the slices on top of the freshly-made lemonade. Best part about that was sucking on the slices after they'd absorbed the lemonade while sitting in the refrigerator. On a hot, muggy summer day nothing tasted better than those naturally flavored slices Back then we never drank soda. We were lucky and didn't even know it- the adults never bought the stuff!

Of course, the finishing touch was a home-baked cookie or two and if you were outside enjoying the day with your lemonade and that cookie or two-life was absolutely-no questions asked-perfect!

Comments

  1. ~ Sil in CoreaJune 4, 2013 at 8:47 PM

    Thank you for rousing good memories! My grandmother and mother made Homemade Lemonade, too!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Barbara Briggs WardJune 11, 2013 at 9:40 PM

    The best lemonade there is Sil!

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Those Small Milk Cartons With Straws

Image
I can't remember what elementary grade I was in when taking a morning break to enjoy a small, sometimes cold and sometimes not so cold small container of whole milk with my classmates. The Milk Break was part of the daily schedule. I do remember how good it tasted. The milk didn't come in flavors. Not even chocolate. There was no fat free or calcium enriched or soybean milk. Just whole milk in individual cartons.  The cartons were either opened by the teacher and then the student put a straw into the milk or there was a sealed hole in the carton and either the student or teacher pushed a straw through the hole. Straws were not fancy or colored. They did not have brand names or licensed characters on them. They did not have loops, making it possible to watch the milk go around the loops as a student sucked on the straw. They did not come wrapped in cellophane attached to the carton.  Instead, the teacher would walk around each table full of students, stopping beside each studen...
Read more

National Sewing Month

Image
 IN RECOGNITION of SEPTEMBER BEING NATIONAL SEWING MONTH I have written extensively about my mother’s fabric shop which was attached to our home out in the country where I spent many a school evening ‘designing’ outfits instead of doing homework, especially math. When I was in my preteens my grandmother taught sewing on Saturday mornings during the winter in my mother's shop. That is where I learned about darts and inseams, marking, and pinning patterns and secrets on how to cut patterns out. While it took me forever to trim a pattern, pin it to the fabric, and cut it out, my grandmother did it in lightning speed. And when she was not the instructor, she would be in her home, in her sewing room sitting at her little black Singer sewing machine with a tape measure around her neck, pumping the foot pedal and turning out one beautifully sewn item after another. She had the eye for her artform and when you have the eye, creativity is the driving force. My mother also had the eye. She w...
Read more

A Kitten In the Old Barn

Image
 My son  Brian & I had been thinking about getting a kitten for the longest time but there was always a reason why we put it off. Truth is those reasons were just excuses. My excuses. The thought of bringing a kitten into our home exhausted me. I did not welcome the responsibility. Besides Brian wanting us to get a kitten, so did my two grandchildren, ages 11 and 14. I would keep telling them "Pretty soon." Then they would get busy, or I would get busy, and it never happened. Until this past week. Another summer was quickly passing by and soon, I told myself, they would not bother to ask about going for a kitten. They'd have more important things to do. And so, late one morning this past week, after telling Brian what I was up to, I picked those two grandchildren up. I said we were going to lunch and then maybe Alex Bay for the afternoon. After having our lunch, I told them I had to make a quick trip to Walmart. Once inside, I put a few things in my cart. Then I led ...
Read more