When life (or friends) gives you lemons.....

Make Lemonade, Lemon Sorbet and Lemon Meringue Pie

Not so long ago we went to a friend's house for a bbq.  It was a lovely late afternoon and evening - grown up conversation, kids playing in the yard (and the little guy coming too close to a cactus more than once, lol) and just general relaxation.  My kids aren't known for keeping out of mischief though, and it wasn't long before they'd denuded this poor friend's lemon tree!  She very graciously let them bring all "their" lemons home.  They were soooo happy & proud of their harvest.

Ofcourse the big girl woke up first thing the next morning and started asking to make lemonade.  She asked and asked and asked and asked and asked, until finally I was ready (or I was just tired of hearing her ask).

I had to look up the recipe for lemonade, having never made it before - and what I found online seemed to be that the best recipe is this:

Lemonade
1 cup sugar
1 cup water
1 cup of lemon juice

* You heat the water in a pot and stir in the sugar until it dissolves.  Remove from the heat and add the lemon juice, and viola you have a wonderful lemonade concentrate. 

* You need to add quite a bit of water to dilute it before you actually drink it, but it's delicious :)

So our first step was to juice the lemons.  We only have a very low-tech old fashioned juicer, but it worked.  The kids tried hard to get some juice out, but in all honesty I did most of the real work.

Then we dissolved the sugar in the water - the little guy was FAR more interested in checking out his reflection in my shiny new pots than doing any stirring....

I meant to get pictures of the kids drinking their delicious homemade lemonade, but somehow it all got drunk before I did!

To make the Lemon Sorbet I just poured some of the lemonade concentrate into ice cube trays and froze it.  I put it in the blender when we were ready to eat it.  It turns out that it is pretty soft when frozen and gets quite runny when blended.  It was a nicer consistancy when we just put the lemonade ice cubes in a bowl & ate them.

 

That said, this lemon sorbet was VERY tart - too sour for the kids, or even for my husband.  I love sour stuff and thought it was delicious!  I'm sure there's a way to remedy that -more sugar maybe, or more water??

As for the Lemon Meringue Pie - we haven't made that yet, it's on the menu for dessert on Friday night.  I'll let you know how it turns out!!

Linking up here:

PSA: Sunflower seeds have shells!!

Really, I promise you they do!  I must be the only adult on earth who didn't just know this - and ofcourse it resulted in a (just marginally amusing) mishap in the kitchen.

A few days ago I spotted this recipe for cinnamon apple pie muffins at this awesome blog.  I knew I wanted to make them, but we didn't have any trail mix - so I figured, no problem, I'll make my own.  I looked through the kitchen and threw some stuff together, almonds, walnuts, raisins, dried cranberries, and yes, you guessed it....sunflower seeds!!  Ofcourse I had no idea that the seeds needed to come OUT of their shells (how did I not know this?? Mum, I blame you!!).  So the little guy & I merrily went on our way baking our delicious muffins - he kept putting his hands in the bowl ofcourse and tasting everything (and making a glorious mess).  He looks so cute in his little apron, and he actually enjoyed baking (I usually am trying to keep him out of the kitchen so I can get stuff done!).  Once the muffins were done they looked really good (if I do say so myself), so we barely waited for them to cool before trying one. 

Not 2 seconds later the little guy is spitting his out, like spraying it everywhere and wiping his tongue with his hands.  I thought he was crazy.....until I tried one.  There is nothing quite like being speared in the roof of your mouth by a sunflower seed shell!!  They are sharp, and quite unpleasant, lol!  Ofcourse the muffins were otherwise delicious so I proceeded to break mine apart and carefully pull each sunflower seed out so that I could eat the of the rest of it.  So please learn from my mistake, and don't add complete sunflower seeds to your baking!!  I'm just terrible in the kitchen, really.  The big girl and my husband have been taking the mickey all afternoon :)

Well, maybe I'm not completely terrible.  I redeemed myself a little with the kids by making Strawberry Applesauce.  They loved it!  All I did was add equal parts applesauce (unsweetened) and fresh strawberries to the blender and blend them all up.  It was delicious!  I've looked at the flavoured applesauces in the grocery store and almost all of them have high fructose corn syrup, this is a great way to avoid that!