The Best Lemonade

The best lemonade needs to be very refreshing. You know we’re living very hot days these days in Turkey. And the best way to feel refreshed is having some cold drinks. Otherwise we should keep taking shower all day. I know no drink can substitute water to remove our thirst, but we need something beyond this in this season. I think refreshment is the right word to describe what we need these days. And a kind of cold drink is the best remedy for this.

Lemonade is always on top of my list when I want some refreshment, but my husband’s favorite used to be totally different . Do you have any idea what it was? Let me give a clue. It is dark in color. Is it enough to guess? No? Another clue:  Millions of people drink it around the world although experts have millions of warnings about it. Can you guess it now? Right, he was almost addicted to coke when we first met. I couldn’t believe when he told me that he drank two liters of coke a day. Two big liters! Whenever we went to a Turkish fast food restaurant, I would order ayran(my second favorite) whereas he would order coke and our arguement would start. It was the early time of our relationship and I started to think that it would be hard to get on well with him. Yes, just because of his coke addiction. You may find it nonsense, but it was important for me. I made a researh on the net and found lots of harms of coke. To begin with, it’s an artificial drink, it has lots of chemicals in it. It is an addictive drink because of the amount of caffeine it contains. You may find yourself at the hospital’s emergency room at a night with a heavy stomach ache or you may have to visit the dentist more often when you drink too much coke.  You may also be faced with osteoporosis (bone loss) at older ages. Aren’t these enough to avoid this tempting but killing drink? No matter how much I warned him, he kept drinking it.

I thought that the more I talked on this issue, the more attractive it became for him, so I decided not to talk for some time. However, as you can guess, I didn’t give up. Meanwhile I was thinking of a way to make help him quit coke. I must also admit that he started to struggle with coke as we were getting closer. I understood that talking or continually warning was not the right way.

Then one day, I made the best lemonade for him and that day is the starting point of his coke- free life. Luckily, this happened before we married, I mean it didn’t last so long. I wouldn’t make it so often before, but since I saw him drinking it with a great enjoyment, lemonade has got its permanent place in our refrigerator.

This will be the best lemonade you’ve tasted. I suggest a large and tall glass for this lemonade. Put some ice cubes in the glass if you like, then place mint leaves on them. Pour lemonade and put mint leaves or some nice tiny blossoms on the top. You may also add two very thin lemon slices as a decoration.

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Start with grating the lemons, but be careful, you should grate just the yellow part, when you reach its white, stop grating or your lemonade tastes bitter. Then squeeze the lemons, you must get a cup of lemon juice. If 5 lemon is not enough for it, you can add one or two lemons.

Put lemon juice and grated lemon shell in a big jar. Add sugar and ginger powder in it. Pour 5 cups hot water and stir until the sugar melts. Cover the jar and let it rest. When it reaches the right temperature to get in the refrigerator (not too hot, but warm), wait it in the refrigerator for about 3 hours.  Then take it out and transfer it into a carafe with a strainer. Put a few leaves of mint into this carafe and it is ready to serve.

Fresh mint leaves and ginger powder are so important here, they absolutely add more refreshment besides their wonderful taste and benefits for health.

You see how it’s so easy to prepare a totally natural cold drink.

First published on August 8, 2009. Updated on April 21 2015