Growing up in Vietnam, we don't have the yellow lemon like here in the west. Our lemon is the green lime and we got plenty of them. There's at least one house on every street that has a lime tree. When summer comes knocking, limeade is our drink of choice. Cheap and easy to make. There's also no packaged juice avail. then !!! You either make your own drink or you have to go to a restaurant or food stall for them.
I love limeade ! the smell of cut limes brings back so many memories for me. Our 264 Le Loi house, my grandma waiting for me coming home from school, and my mom with a pitcher of limeade. My grandma would hug me and I can feel her cool soft skin on my cheeks when her face touches mine. I miss her so much. I know she's up there in heaven with the Lord and one day we will get to see each other again. It's comforting knowing our relationship doesn't end with her passing, we're just apart from each other for a while !
Anyways, this drink is very easy to make. You'll need lime or lemon, or a mix of both, cane sugar or honey (or white sugar) and water. I used a mix of both lime and lemon because the lime we get here doesn't yield too much juice :-( 3 limes and I barely get half of a cup.
INGREDIENTS
Serving size: 8 cups
4 medium size limes (if using key lime, you'll need about 6-8 of them)
2 lemons
(all should yield about 1 to a cup of juice)
1 cup of cane sugar (more or less according to your taste, you can use white sugar if you like)
2 table spoon of honey (can be omitted, just add more sugar)
1 cup of boiling water
7 cups of cold water
Juice the limes and lemons into a bowl. Strain out seeds and pulps and put juice into a pitcher. Boil water then pour 1 cup of the boiling water into a bowl. Add the sugar and honey to the boiled water and stir until completely dissolved. Add the sugar water into the pitcher and mix. Add the 7 cups of water, stir around then taste. Add more sugar if you want it sweeter. Chill in the fridge.
If you don't have time to chill the drink in the fridge, make the drink a bit more sweet then add 2 or 3 cups of ice.
Garnish with thinly sliced up left over rinds or slices of lime and lemon.
To make the limeade lemonade pink, I add 2 table spoons of crushed frozen raspberries !
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| I added the juice of 1 orange to make the drink orange in color (kid requested) |
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| We drink our limeade in tea cup ! this is how we roll :-) |
