I grew up in Michigan. You can grow almost anything in Michigan – blueberries, strawberries, potatoes, peas, carrots, green beans, corn, blackberries, apples, mosquitoes… I never saw a single citrus tree, though. Citrus was such a special treat that the high school marching band used to sell boxes of citrus as a fundraiser.

Now I live in Arizona. It’s pretty hard to grow most things in the desert, but not citrus. When the citrus trees start bearing fruit you can’t give the stuff away. Even food banks will refuse to take it.

This is my neighbors tree. It hangs into our yard a bit so I’ve been helping myself to the lemons. (It’s ok. He doesn’t mind. I promise.)

Growing up without lemon trees nearby, I thought Country Time was the best lemonade ever. Then, a couple of years ago, I tried fresh lemonade. Oh. My. Gosh. I don’t even know how Country Time sleeps at night calling itself lemonade. Fresh lemonade is so good. I had no idea. I want you to try it, even if you live in Michigan. Just go by a few lemons. I know they’re expensive there, but splurge just this once. You deserve to know what real lemonade tastes like.

So here’s what you do.

Buy yourself some lemons, or, if you’re lucky like me, steal some from your neighbor in the middle of the night. You’ll probably need 5-7 depending on the size and how tart you like it.

Then cut them all in half

and juice them.

A few years ago my dad got me an electric citrus juicer.

They’re not very expensive, so if you have room, and think you’ll be juicing citrus a couple of times a year, this might be something you’ll want to invest in. For those of you in Michigan, where citrus is worth it’s weight in gold, you probably won’t get enough use out of a juicer so you can just juice them by hand. They won’t come out this clean though.

If you live in Michigan you’ll juice your 5-7 lemons and skip to the end of the post for the lemonade recipe. If you’re lucky enough to have a neighbor with a lemon tree, though, you’ll want to keep going until your garbage can looks like this so you can have real lemonade all year round.

The juicer will strain a little bit of the pulp and seeds, but your still going to have quite a bit in there.

If your daughter freaks out about the seeds let her dig them out herself.

After you’ve juiced your lemons, measure out 2 cups of juice and pour it into a freezer bag. I put mine over a measuring cup to make it a little easier. Make sure you push the bag close to the sides of the measuring cup to eliminate as much air as possible, otherwise your juice won’t fit. And again, when you seal the bag, try to get most of the air out, it’ll freeze better.

Stack your bags and freeze them flat. If your freezer has wire shelves you might want to put a piece of cardboard or a baking sheet under the bags of lemon juice until they’re frozen.

Here’s the recipe for lemonade. I forgot to take a picture of the finished product, so for now just imagine a tall, frosty glass of fresh tartness. This is so easy and will make even a simple meal of burgers and dogs something extra special.

2 Cups lemon juice
1 1/4 Cups sugar
6 cups water

Mix until sugar is dissolved.

Like my salsa recipe, this recipe can be adjusted to taste. I like mine a little tart. If you like yours a bit on the sweet side you can reduce the amount of lemon juice or increase the sugar.

If you’ve never had fresh lemonade before, please come back and tell me what you think!