Homemade Lemonade

One day, my daughter was asking me what lemonade is made of (she is at this age where she has questions about EVERYTHING.  What's it made of, what's in this, what is that, what does that mean).

This particular question has come up more than once, so last time we were in the grocery store, I asked her if she wanted to make lemonade with me.  Of course she thought this idea was AWESOME, so we picked out the best looking lemons and a package of sugar (one thing that we don't have, didn't buy and I would highly recommend, is a juicer of some sort, because using our hands got fairly tiresome...).  We had a half gallon container at home already.

When we got home, I cut all of the lemons in half, and we squeezed each of them.  (If you do this at home, make sure no one's touching their eyes in this process..  My daughter was lucky, but I touched mine, and lemon juice + eyes = ouch!)  put them into that half gallon bottle.  We filled the gallon about a third.  Then, we added about half a cup of sugar (it sounds like a lot.. and it probably is..) then filled the gallon to about 3/4 and put a bunch of ice in to fill msot of the remainder.

Now, this isn't a cost effective project.  There are a lot of things that are cheaper to make from scratch than to buy.  Lemonade is not one of those things.  The lemons alone, cost us about $4.50.  (With coupons, I bought a bottle of lemonade, which is actually where I got the half gallon bottle that I used, for about $0.50).  But it was fun, and showing my child that we can make things that we buy homemade, and have them come out so much better. (This lemonade was delicious and  a big hit for our whole family.)  As far as fun family projects go, it isn't costly though.  I've spent a lot more on projects that my daughter and I have done together.

I am thinking that we will try Orange juice next (but we WILL be buying a juicer first!)