Limonade

You may be brighter than me--you probably are--so you would never have juiced lemons and limes, added some sugar and thought you had lemonade. No, you would know that that concoction is strong enough to remove paint, and certainly the lining of your stomach and the enamel from your teeth! Wowsers, that stuff is killer. Straight lemon and lime juice is not the way to make lemonade, no sir. Here's a better route I tried tonight... Juice: Lemons and or limes (heck, they're the same in Spanish!) to make one cup of juice. Today it was two large lemons and four small limes. Dilute this with cold water--I used a gallon pitcher and added about three quarts of water. Now it's about right for drinking, and you can drink it straight, but I like it sweet, so I dissolved about a cup of sugar into the pitcher. Serve it over ice cubes, and cue up "Summertime".

On Grapes

When you're making juice everyday, you go through lots of roughage. A few minutes ago I juiced three big bunches of spinach and it yielded only about two cups. So, we use Bountiful Baskets each week to provide fodder for the juicer. This seems to be the best value in produce around here. But the best part is that you never know what you'll get in your basket each week, which means you get to be creative.

They've been supplying us with grapes the last couple of weeks. For a few buck extra you can get an entire flat of grapes--seedless table grapes, the small, super sweet ones that are not like the big ones you usually buy at the store. Thompson's seedless? Anyway, we've been drinking lots of grape juice. It's amazing how filling just juice can be.

But it's nothing like Welch's: even with a powerful juicer, the grapes leave some pulp in the juice. And it's actually very good. Last night I made two gallons of straight grape juice. After sitting in the fridge overnight it had settled and left the pulp on the bottom. I drank the pulp less stuff, and it was good, but not necessarily better. It's very sweet.

So, here are a couple of favorite grape mixtures from the last couple of weeks.

Grapiflower
1 head of cauliflower, including greens
6 tomatillos
Grapes to make 1 quart of juice total

Juice 'em and drink 'em!

Grape Cocktail
A handful of baby carrots
A box of strawberries, including greens
Two pears, just remove the stem
Plums, pitted
Grapes to taste

Lipeade
Eight key limes, peeled
Half a banana,peeled (takes the edge off)
Grapes to make at least a quart
Agave nectar for sweetness if desired; but I bet more grapes would do the trick.