Living zBeautiful Mix: Martha Sunday

A few years ago, our travels took us to Ottawa, Canada, and, on July 1^st, we had a chance to join the Canadians for their celebration of Canada’s Independence Day. Lucky for us, the heat waive apparently decided to join the celebration also. It was not welcome, but who was asking?!

As we walked up Wellington street towards the Parliament Hill, there were lots of lemonade stands selling lemonade to the crowd for triple the normal price. While we did not want to pay eight Canadian bucks for a small cup of lemonade, we did not have a choice.

Well, I am not sure if they forgot to put sugar in it or what, the lemonade was very sour, but, believe me, it was still worth eight Canadian bucks!

What I am getting at is that since hot summer days are here, this Sunday I decided to make a refreshingly cool and delicious lemonade.

For the recipe, I went to my always-go-to Martha Stewart website, and I found a recipe for Strawberry Lemonade. It seemed simple enough to make in a few minutes and looked so good. I could almost taste the cool and refreshing juices flowing into my mouth.

The recipe seemed very easy: strawberries, superfine sugar, lemons and seltzer water.

I had sugar, lemons and strawberries, but I did not have seltzer water. So I stopped by few stores, but none of them had seltzer water. Is there any difference between seltzer water and regular club soda?

I was determined to follow the recipe and drove to the nearest have-it-all store - Whole Foods. Interestingly, Whole Foods did not carry seltzer water either.

I gave up and grabbed a bottle of sparkling mineral water, and asked a knowledgeable looking worker if sparkling mineral water is a good substitute for seltzer water. The knowledgeable looking worker exclaimed:"This is much better than seltzer water, and it is in a glass container!"

Well... I admit, I do sometimes buy food or drinks in plastic containers. But not today! Today I will be substituting seltzer water with sparkling mineral water in a glass bottle.

I finally drove home and got all the ingredients out.

I pureed strawberries and sugar, added lemon juice and sparkling mineral water. Done!

Great tip from Martha: to make it easier to squeeze lemons and get their juices flowing, you should roll them on the countertop, applying gentle pressure with the heel of your palm.

Making lemonade was easy... but messy...