Lemon-y Libations

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Last night, I volunteered to bring a dessert to dinner at a friend’s house. We were having grilled chicken sandwiches, so I thought I would bring something relatively healthy and light.

I have had a hankering lately for the combination of blueberry and lemon. I have a recipe stuck to my range hood with a magnet for Lemon Blueberry bread that has been there for weeks but I haven’t gotten around to making it. So I decided last night that I would do a “quick & easy” version of that for dessert. So, after work, I tottered of to the local Wally-World in search of three things:

1. Angel Food Cake
2. Low Sugar or Sugar Free Blueberry Preserves
3. One lemon

The angel food cake was easy-breezy. I couldn’t find any low-sugar or sugar free preserves so I had to settle for the loaded down stuff but wrote it off because everything else was so healthy. The problem occured when I tried to find a lemon.

Oh, finding lemons wasn’t a problem. It was the finding of one lemon that was giving me fits. All the lemons at Walmart yesterday were available in 5 lb bags. Really? Who needs a five pound bag of lemons? Someone with an insane craving for a lip-puckering citrus? Someone with a really really dirty garbage disposal? I couldn’t fathom who it would be but I needed one lemon, so I purchased about 10.

What do you do when live gives you lemons?

Da da da da da da da…. da da da da DA, da da da da da (Jeopardy theme music…)
Make lemonade of course! I had never made lemonade before though so I wasn’t sure where to start. And I like to always add a little twist to recipes I make up in my head. So, I bought some lemonade concentrate and diet lemon-lime soda. I bought the concentrate because I wasn’t sure how many lemons I would have to squeeze to get enough lemon juice to make lemonade and I wasn’t about to buy 10 lbs of lemons.

So I got home and set everything down on the bar. Mom gave me her what-did-you-buy-at-Walmart-this-time? look, one that has been suspiciously passed down to my husband, and I quickly explained that the sale of one lemon was unheard of in our overly stimulated consumeristic society. I had to buy a TON of them. So I was going to be a sweet daughter and make her some delicious, refreshing lemonade. The conversation went much like this:

Mom, do you have a juicer?

Yeah, look in the drawer next to the silverware.

(Rummage, rummage, rummage…)

I don’t see a juicer in there. Anywhere else?

Are you sure? It’s blue – it was your Grandma’s. Look in the other drawer next to the stove.

(Rummage, rummage, rummage…)

Nope, not in there either.

Come look on the shelves in the living room, maybe it is in here… Or, you could look on the corner china shelf in the dining room. I know I saw it around here somewhere.

Oh forget it – I could have juiced all the 5 lb bags of lemons at Walmart by now!

So I quit looking for the juicer and went for the old “stab it with a fork and squeeze the heck out of it” method. It worked wonderfully! I put a sieve over a measuring cup to catch the seeds and ended up getting about a cup of lemon juice out of the lemons. I combined that with about a cup of sugar, whisked the heck out of it and then added about 3/4 of the (now thawed) lemonade concentrate.

I saved 1/4 of the concentrate because I was so focused on getting the lemons squeezed that I forgot to save any for the lemon-blueberry sauce, which was the original reason for the lemons anyways…. DUH!

Anywho, I whisked that all together and then added a 2-liter bottle of lemon-lime soda (I used diet 7-up because it was majorly on sale). Voila – a fizzy, fun, lemonade sparkler. (I didn’t do it, but I would imagine a little lemon vodka would make it extra fun!)

Mom said it was too tart, Dad said it was too sweet and I thought it was just right. In fact, I can’t wait to get home and have a nice big glass of it while watching a friend coach her niece’s softball team. Sounds like the perfect spring afternoon to me!

Oh, for those that were wondering… I didn’t completely forget about the dessert. I combined 1/4 of the concentrate, about 1 tsp of lemon zest, and the entire jar of blueberry preserves in a small pan. I brought it to a simmer and let it simmer for about 10 minutes until it got thick and gooey. Then I sliced the angelfood cake into about 3/4 inch slices and drizzled the sauce over it. If I had them, I would have topped with whipped cream, blueberries and a sprig of mint. But I’m not running a 5-star restaurant! It was delish and light and a perfectly sweet & tart ending to a great dinner!

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