Strawberry Lemonade

My dear friends, you have been on my mind a great deal these last few weeks. If you’ve visited Spanglish Spoon in the past, you already know there have been quite a bit of changes around here. I would have liked these changes to come with at least a little bit of a warning, but sometimes life doesn’t go the way we plan and as the saying goes, “When life gives you lemons, grab the tequila and salt.”

No? That’s not how it goes? My bad. Let me try that again.

When life gave me lemons, I made strawberry lemonade.

Truth be told though, that’s exactly what I did when I couldn’t upload any images into my posts and then lost all my images on my blog in a matter of 48 hours. I took two shots of tequila with lemon and salt to calm my anxiety.

Anyway, after a long phone call with my host provider and some help from a web designer, we figured out a solution to getting them back up without having to upload them all individually again. However, in that moment of panic at the fact that I couldn’t do my work, and literally lost all my images that went with my content, I found myself at a crossroad with my blog.

On one hand, I was so grateful that it’s all going to be okay and soon get fixed. On the other hand, I felt like now more than ever it was time for a change, but I was scared shitless that we’d run into more problems down the road. However, Spanglish Spoon has been needing a makeover for a long time, so I went for it. And that’s exactly where we are right now – trying to figure out what’s staying, what’s going, what’s needed, etc. There will still be a bit more changes throughout the month, but hopefully when we’re done, visiting Spanglish Spoon will be a better experience for everyone.

For now, I want to say THANK YOU for sticking around and coming back to see what’s new on Spanglish Spoon. Your support means so much to me.

Today I’d like to share a Strawberry Lemonade recipe that was ready to be published right before I started having those image issues.

After my visit with CA Strawberries and Ramos Farms, everyone who attended the tour was given a flat of strawberries to take home as a gift. So many ideas ran through my head about what I could make with so many fresh strawberries. Coincidentally just a week before that, I was also given a large bag of lemons from my neighbor. So I made strawberry lemonade ;).

What I have found to work best when making any kind of sweetened drink, is to make a simple syrup. Simple syrup is basically equal parts water to sugar that is boiled down to your desired consistency. You can use less sugar if you’d like ( I typically do), but because lemon is so sour, it needs a lot of sugar.

For this lemonade, I used 1 cup of water with 1 cup sugar and simply left the water on a low simmer until all the sugar was completely dissolved. Turned it off and let it cool completely.

While that cooled down, I prepped the strawberries and lemon juice.

Purée 2 cups washed and hulled strawberries in a blender or food processor. Strain through a fine-mesh sieve. This should give you about 1 cup of seedless strawberry purée.

Add 1 cup freshly squeezed lemon juice (seeds removed) to the simple syrup.

Bring it all together in a large pitcher with 6 cups cold filtered water. Stir well and serve it on the rocks.

Cheers, everyone! And thanks for stopping by.