Orangeade

Summer tiiiiime and the livin' is easy!!

I was working at the co-op this afternoon and a woman was buying a huge bag of lemons. She commented that she and her daughter are hooked on homemade lemonade. I thought "mmm.. lemonade" then I thought "MMMM... ORANGEADE!!"

My grandma used to make Orangeade, and when my Mom was a kid one of her jobs was making the orangeade. My mom used to make it for us when we were kids, maybe once or twice a summer because honestly, squeezing all that fruit is a bit of a hassle! She had an old fashioned metal citrus press and you'd have to put all your weight on it (we were kids, remember?) to press the juice out. Sure, mixing storebought orange juice with lemon juice would be faster, but it wouldn't be the same!

I don't really know my grandma's recipe. If I asked my Mom, she might have an idea of the proportions, but my Mom is in Italy right now, and incommunicado, so I winged it. The end result is delicious, though much lighter and more refreshing than my Grandma (and Mom's) Orangeade. The reason being that my Grandma's secret ingredient, we joke, was sugar. It's only sort of a joke, she put sugar in everything. The reason I'd only ever eat my Grandma's potatoes and carrots as a kid? She cooked them in sugar, not even kidding. So I think that if you doubled the amount of sugar I used, you'd get about what my grandma made... except Grandma didn't make simple syrup, your Orangeade was just gritty until the sugar dissolved. Try it with one cup of sugar -- or double it if you like things really sweet!!

This recipe is 2 weight watchers points plus per 8 oz cup. (For comparison, for those of you not playing this game, 8oz of plain old orange juice is 3 points)




Orangeade
1 cup fresh squeezed lemon juice (about 6 lemons)
2 cups fresh squeezed orange juice (about 6 oranges)
1 cup of sugar, mixed with 1 cup of water and heated in a small pot until dissolved ("simple syrup")
10 cups water

1. Mix everything together.

2. Pour over ice. Drink.

3. Wow this is an easy recipe!