Summertime Limeade and ramblings

It’s like lemonade but tangier.

I grew up drinking freshly made juices on a daily basis. I didn’t realize that it was unusual behavior to do so. In the United States you get your juice from a carton at the store. I don’t think Nicaragua even had premade juices. There were so many fruits, many of which stayed in season for most of the year. We never went without fresh juice. Before I learned how to cook or bake anything I learned how to pick ‘limon mandarinas‘ from our tree and make a pitcher of juice. Now I realize that limon mandarinas don’t even exist in the states, at least not anywhere that I’ve seen, and I’ve also realized that fresh juice is a pricey commodity.  When you decide to pay the price for fresh juice it pales in comparison to what we used to have in Nicaragua.

Nicaragua, my beautiful tropical land. We had over a dozen fruit trees in our backyard. Something was always blooming and bursting with life. I miss being able to climb those trees and pick my own fruit. Sometimes I’d just hide out in the avocado tree if I didn’t feel like seeing people. Or if I was feeling sociable I’d climb the mango tree and wave to the passersby on the street. I have many memories of just being perched on a branch somewhere. This is starting to sound like the memoirs of a monkey but it was peaceful and beautiful; I miss it sorely.

I also really miss drinking lemonade with every meal. Trader Joe’s lemonade just isn’t the same, we were slightly spoiled as you can tell. When I saw limes on sale I jumped at the opportunity. I added a bit of basil for a contemporary twist (hence the basil plant in the picture above)–turned out to be a useless addition. There wasn’t enough basil to really flavor the drink. I’ll skip it next time, or triple the amount. Aside from the basil, this was a fairly tasty drink. Maybe not the best lemonade (limeade) recipe but not half bad.

After all the rambling I bet you just want me to skip to the chase but for now I’ll leave this without a recipe because I want to wait until I’ve found lemony nirvana.

Here are a few of my pictures from Nicaragua.

Volcan Masaya–only a couple miles from my old house.

Headed to Las Isleta in Granada.

During the Santo Domingo Parade.

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