If Life Gives You Lemons.

The suggestion that ‘If life gives you lemons - make lemonade’ is, of course, about Life, not Lemons. It is not a bad philosophy of Life to live by, I guess. It is not a bad idea for a surfeit of lemons either.

I don’t know who first said it, and I don’t know why I was pondering on it recently (in its ‘Life’ meaning), but I do know that it got me thinking that I have not done a post on it (in its ‘surfeit of Lemons’ meaning.)

Lemonade is “a drink made of lemon-juice and water, sweetened with sugar. In England now very commonly applied to ‘aerated lemonade’, which consists of water impregnated with carbonic acid with the addition of lemon-juice and sugar”, and the first usage quoted in the Oxford English Dictionary is in 1663.

I am not too sure that the ‘addition of lemon juice’ is at all accurate in relation to modern, commercially prepared lemonade, are you? Lemon-flavouring, perhaps? Bottled lemonade is decidedly un-lemony, and overwhelmingly sugary, and decidedly unpleasant, to my taste. How much lovelier do the following versions of lemonade - from The Lady’s Assistant for Regulating and Supplying the Table, by Charlotte Mason (1787) – sound? I guess they should be more properly called citrus-ade: note the added flavourings (rosemary!) and the interesting milky version. May I make a plea for the return of genuine lemonade?


Lemonade.
Pare two oranges and fix lemons very thin, steep the parings in two quarts of water, four hours; put the juice of twelve lemons and fix oranges upon twelve ounces of fine sugar; when the sugar is melted put the water to it; add more sugar, if necessary, a little orange-flower water: pass it through a bag till fine.

Another Way.
Half a pint of lemon-juice, the juice of two oranges; pare the rind of the lemons, as thin as possible, into one quart of spring-water; let them stand all night, strain it, sweeten it; boil the peels in another quart of water; mix the lemon juice with a pint of milk, put to it the water that is sweetened; add the other while it is hot; when cold pass it through a bag, into which put a sprig of rosemary.


Quotation for the Day

If life gives you a lemon, make lemonade. However - if life gives you a pickle, you might as well give up, because pickle-ade is disgusting.
Clifton J. Gray.