This weekend has been quite citrus-y! When we were at the mall on Friday, we stopped by the Lush counter at Macy’s to check out all the handmade soaps. They all smell so good! We are both particularly partial to lemony/citrus-y scents. Drew ended up getting a little of two different ones and our bathroom since then smells like a big bunch of lemons! 🙂

When we were at the grocery store yesterday, we bought a big bag of lemons (for only like $2) because Drew is now set on making his own organic soap and wanted to give it a lemon scent, of course.

Lemons in the kitchen reminds me of home. My mom often had a big jar of lemons on our kitchen island. She would use them to zest into scones, or more often than not, not use them for anything and they would go bad before we had a chance to make anything with them. I think they are really pretty in a nice glass jar on the kitchen table. 🙂

Anyway, not only did I want scones after looking at them, I really, really wanted lemonade! So, I made lemonade. I used a recipe out of the Southern Plate recipe book we got last weekend. More about that, here.

Here is the recipe:

1. Combine 1 cup water and 1 3/4 cups sugar in a medium saucepan and bring to a boil, whisking to dissolve the sugar.
2. Remove from heat and let cool.
3. Pour into a 2-quart pitcher along with 1 1/2 cups lemon juice.
4. Stir and add enough water to make 2 quarts. (or according to taste)
5. Stir and serve over ice. Refrigerate any leftovers.

Even though the recipe doesn’t call for freshly squeezed lemon juice, that is all we had and is what we used. We made a smaller batch because it takes a lot of lemons to get 1 1/2 cups lemon juice. (one lemon will give you roughly 3 tablespoons of juice)

The fun thing about this activity is if you have kids, (or a fiance that acts like one) you can let them play with the leftover lemon halves. I’m sure they will be entertained. They can build things like lemon towers:

Even better than the lemonade itself, is if you put it in the freezer until it starts to freeze, and then you get nice and cool frozen lemonade. Yummy! Especially with this 80+ degree weather here in New Orleans! Goodness it has been HOT! What happened to Spring?! 🙂