More Sweet Than Bitter

They say when life gives you lemons, make lemonade. Well, life gave me a lot of lemons this weekend, about 3 dozen in total.  My in-laws have a meyer lemon tree that really overproduces and as a result we've perfected our homemade lemonade recipe. The glass bottles are from IKEA. They are perfect to throw on ice for a bbq and fit on the door of the refrigerator. I used a grease pen to mark which was which. Here are three variations, Original, Lavender-Thyme, and Ginger...

Homemade Meyer Lemonade
Yields 1 1/2 quarts

1/2 cup granulated sugar
5 cups water
1 cup of fresh squeezed meyer lemon juice (about 6 medium)


I make a quick simple syrup by combining the sugar and 1 cup of water in a small sauce pan over medium heat until the sugar is completely dissolved.  Allow to cool.


Combine syrup, juice and between 3 and 4 cups of water in pitcher or funnel into a glass bottle with a lid.  Stir or shake, serve over ice.

*For the Lavender-Thyme variation, add 3 sprigs of thyme (or lemon-thyme) and 1 sprig of lavender (leaf only) to the cooled simple syrup in the bottle.
 
*To make the ginger lemonade, add 2 slices of fresh ginger to the simple syrup while it is cooking.  Keep the ginger with the syrup in the bottle, it will deepen in flavor after a few hours. I suppose if one were inclined, this would be excellent with bourbon.