When life gives you lemons, make lemonade.🍋🍋

I got a bunch of lemons from Elaine whom I met through my other friend Rose. Elaine had buckets and buckets of lemons – literally buckets of lemons to give away. I met Elaine recently to pick up over 200 lemons – did I count them?  Yes! In fact I counted 275 lemons to be exact. Why you ask would I volunteer to pick up so many lemons?  I couldn’t bear to see these gorgeous lemons go to the garbage can, I just couldn’t.

Elaine and I got to chat when I saw her to pick up all the lemons and I found out that Elaine is a native Bay Arean, born and raised here in Santa Clara Valley.  She was reminiscing of old times when she was a little girl growing up here in the Valley which was covered with thousands of fruit trees back then. Elaine has seen the Valley slowly change from the valley of orchards into what is Silicon Valley today. Elaine said she still holds on to those memories of when the valley was covered in fruit orchards by growing a little fruit orchard of her own in her back yard. I am looking forward now to her summer bounty of stone fruit 😋☺️.

Interestingly, when I met Elaine she said some of the lemons were from her garden, but a bunch of them were from her neighbor’s yard. Her neighbor was pruning his lemon tree and was planning on trashing all the lemons that were on the chopped branches. She said she couldn’t bear to see those lemons in the trash bin and agreed to pick them all up. As she was talking to me she pointed to another neighbor’s lemon tree and said “Look at that lemon tree in my other neighbor’s side yard, don’t those lemons look gorgeous, they are probably just going to let them go to waste too, and I hope I’m around to pick them up.”  I nodded my head in understanding and smiled – both of us are kindred spirits – we hate to see anything homegrown go to waste and appreciate the beauty of nature in any and all forms.

You are probably asking the same question my husband and Elaine asked when I agreed to take home over 200 lemons! What in the world are you going to do with all these lemons 🍋🍋🍋🍋🍋???

Well, I looked up a ton of recipes to find anything that would use a large quantity of lemons and all the recipes I found ranging from lemon meringue pie, lemon curd, lemoncello, and lemon anything only required at the most juice of 2-4 lemons.

But the one recipe that used more lemons than any other recipe is lemon syrup or what the kids and I call lemonade syrup.  This recipe actually uses up to 8 lemons – not bad! The recipe was simple enough; warm sugar, water and 1 1/2 cups lemon juice. But in our version we sweetened this syrup as we felt the original formula was too sour.  Here is the original recipe Lemon Syrup.  Below is our sweeter version of what we call lemonade syrup.

Lemonade Syrup:
makes 3 cups syrup

Ingredients:

• 1 cup sugar
• 1 cup water
• 1 cup fresh squeezed lemon juice

Directions:

• Heat water and sugar on the stove until sugar is dissolved. Turn the stove of and let the sugar water cool completely to room temperature. After the sugar water has cooled, add lemon juice and mix-in.
• Lemonade Syrup is ready to be bottled and stored in the refrigerator.

• I bought a bunch of bottles to store the lemonade syrup and the kids and I got cracking on making over 5 bottles of lemonade syrup!  Store the syrup in a sterilized bottle and leave it in the refrigerator to have later. The syrup lasts indefinitely.

Here is a math question 🤔. If we squeezed 6 lemons to make 3 cups of syrup, how many lemons did we use to make 5 bottles of syrup that each hold 8 cups of syrup?  We used 80 lemons! Still have lemons left!  Need to go buy more bottles to make more lemonade syrup 🍋🍹.

When ready to have lemonade we found the best “formula” is 1-part lemonade syrup to 2-parts water.  The lemonade syrup tastes amazing as a spritzer. Just mix 1-part syrup to 2-parts mineral water or club soda, and you have a refreshingly sweet homemade lemon spritzer.

Kids especially love the lemonade syrup.  No more squeezing lemons and adding sugar and doing the whole process every time they want lemonade. Now when they come home from school they make an instant refreshing lemonade whenever they want 🍹😋.

What am I going to do with all those bottles of lemonade syrup?  I gave one small bottle to Elaine. Gave one bottle to Rose.  Another bottle is already finished! Kids loved the lemonade syrup so much they have been having a small glass of lemonade spritzer almost every day.

Another bottle is almost over from when Rani and her friends came over for her birthday party. These girls finished one entire bottle of lemonade syrup. As you can see, this syrup is so good, it won’t last long.

Elaine, you can give me buckets of lemons anytime 😀😃🍋!!

🍋”When life gives you lemons, make lemonade syrup.”😀😋🍋🍹