Mark Bittman's How to Cook Everything offers a fine and simple recipe for lemonade. The secret: don't make too much. Unless you're making lemonade for a crowd, a quart is plenty. I find that it needs no refrigeration for several days. Well, perhaps it would be better to say that it's all gone within forty-eight hours.
Lemonade is a breeze if you have an electric citrus juicer. Juicers are both inexpensive and efficient: they get more juice out of the fruit than mere brawn ever will. (There are expensive lever-powered juicers that don't require electricity.) I find that five lemons yields a cup of juice when I use the electric juicer; working with the nifty Mexican squeezers, I need six lemons. Be sure to buy a few extra lemons.
Mr Bittman's recipe calls for a half-cup of simple syrup. I substitute a third of a cup. To make simple syrup in any quantity, simply boil a measure of sugar in an equal measure of water, stirring until the sugar is dissolved. (I see from a cursory survey of the Internet that recipes for "Bar Sugar" call for twice as much sugar as water. See here for an explanation of why the boiled mixture makes the sugar sweeter.)
Combine the cup of lemon juice and the third-of-a-cup of syrup with three cups of water. Stir well and serve!
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