I'm Thirsty. Time for. . . Limonana!

I found this wonderful picture of a tall, cool glass of Limonana, several posts ago.  And it got me thirsty for that wonderful Israeli drink: lemonade with nana, or mint leaves.  There ain't nothin' like it for thirst-quenching during hot, dry (or humid) summer days, whether in Israel or elsewhere.

So here's a recipe for you.  It makes approximately a 2-quart pitcher.  Enjoy!

Limonana:


1 cup lemon juice (fresh squeezed is best, but bottled works)
1 cup sugar
About ¼ cup fresh mint leaves (to taste) + some extra sprigs (optional)
1 or 2 fresh lemons, skins well scrubbed (optional) and then sliced.
Grape juice, cherry juice or Grenadine (optional)

Chop up the ¼ cup of mint leaves and put in small pan with the sugar and 1 cup of the water. Bring to boil. (Alternately, pour one cup of boiling water over the mint leaves, let steep a minute or two, then add the cup of sugar).

Put the mint/sugar mix and the cup of lemon juice in a 2 quart pitcher and add water to fill (you can use some ice as part of the water to cool this down more quickly).

If you are very finicky, you can strain the lemonade after it cools in order to remove the pieces of chopped mint.

At this point you can add the sliced lemon, although one might well save some for garnish when the lemonade is served, perhaps putting one of the sliced lemons in the pitcher and using slices of the second lemon to hang on the rim of each glass.

The extra sprigs of mint are also to be used as garnish.

Chill the lemonade and serve over ice, with garnish.



For Pink Mint Lemonade
Add some Grenadine, grape juice or cherry juice (in which case you can also throw some cherries into the glass as garnish). Other variations include Strawberry Mint Lemonade (sugar strawberries, let sit overnight, throw into the lemonade – remember to count the sugar you used on the strawberries as part of the recipe! – and garnish with fresh sliced strawberry).
 



For Middle Eastern-style Lemonana
(As served in Tel Aviv, Beirut, Jerusalem and Damascus)
Use HALF the ingredients. Put the sugar/mint mixture (1/2 cup sugar, 2 Tablespoons chopped mint) into a blender. Add the lemon juice (1/2 cup). Add ice to the four cup mark, and some water to fill around the ice up to the four cup mark. Blend until it is slushy. Serve, garnishing only with mint sprigs.

In my case, our blender is milchig (dairy), and we are BBQing and smoking chicken on our grill tonight, so using the blender is out (besides, I'm too lazy).  Instead, I will probably go with the pouring-boiling-water-over-nana-leaves-and-sugar part, because it's...easy.  My mantra for cooking (the little that I do).  Will let you know the outcome, after our Al haAish tonight!

(hat tip DH, for finding this recipe.  We are going to test it out tonight, for our BBQ with friends...)

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Great Debate: Is it Itsy Bitsy, or Inky Dinky, of Spider Fame?

Image
For the better part of a year, I've had an on-again, off-again debate with my D.H. as to the "correct" adjective in the children's finger-play nursery rhyme, "The Itsy-Bitsy Spider" (now you know which one I favor). My D. H. insists that the correct descriptive is "inky dinky," whereas I demur.  I vaguely recollect from my own childhood, either hearing " itsy-bitsy spider ," or even more familiar to me, the description "eency-weency," referring to said spider's miniscule size, yet plucky persistance, and how he (she?) braved the violent rainstorm which "washed it out" after the arduous climb up the water spout, yet doggedly climbed the spout again, after the sun came out and 'dried up all the rain.' Many, if not most of our American nursery rhymes originated on the other side of the pond, in England, for obvious reasons: the American colonists were British in origin, and brought with them the culture an
Read more

The End. Is there a Beginning...?

This is my first post back on Tikkun Olam since April 23rd, 2015. It does not feel real. Why is it that we never think we will ever have a JOLT in our lives that will change the entire life course we have been traveling? We continue on, day by day, complacent, even in the face of serious illness--believing that what we are living is the only reality; that it is immutable, that it is PHYSICAL: you can touch it, feel it, and it will continue to be there for you tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow... But it isn't. And it won't.  Because the unthinkable can, and does, happen, in time. To everybody. As it happened to me, almost a year ago, on August 10, 2015, when my DH - Dear Husband, of 46 years, died. I am living in an Alternate Universe. Because the universe in which I was living all my life until now, is gone. I still want to slap myself in the face and wake myself up. It's a dream. A terrible nightmare.  It's a horror movie with a frightening ending, but I will
Read more

Some Recent Israeli Accomplishments in her 67 Years: Independence Day 2015

Image
An update to Waze which might nip kidnappings in the bud, a possible cure for Alzheimer's, and water management methods California surely can use - just to mention three, on the occasion of Israel's 67th Independence Day celebrations: Lighting the (Independence Day) Torch of the Future of the World. (What a country; what a people!) Dr. Marta Weinstock-Rosin who invented the memory-improving drug Exelon speaks up about a possible future without Alzheimer's. A short excerpt about Dr. Weinstock-Rosin, below.  In many ways, Exelon, and its inventor, paved new paths in Israeli medicine, and Israeli society. Weinstock-Rosin, who is Orthodox, was born in Vienna and fled with her family to Britain in 1939, narrowly escaping from the Nazis. She came to Israel with her family in 1969, and became a professor at Hebrew University in 1981. In 1983, she became head of the Pharmacology department at the Hebrew University (now part of the Institute for Drug Research) in the Fa
Read more