Fresh Approach Cooking

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Word on the street is that it’s not just this fair city suffering through this crazy heat wave…its pretty much everywhere. (We are so self-centered around these parts that the news only just got to us. Wink.) Well my dearies, that calls for a drink! A cool and refreshing drink. Come on now kids, it’s the best way to beat the heat!

In an attempt to tease me as I served this liquid gold to him the other night, my friendly neighbor The Ombudsman (who adoringly claims he only reads this blog for mocking-material.) light-heartedly queried “Is this lemonade made from lemons your stole from trees around the neighborhood?”

And what was my gleeful reply?

”Yes!”

Having been looking for a new place to live for the last few weeks,* I have had the great fortune (in un-occupied homes only) to see not only lemon trees staggering under the weight of their sun-kissed fruit, but several feral gardens just begging to be attended to. Can you blame a girl for nipping a lemon or two? (Or six?) So that is exactly what I did. And with said lemons, I made lemon-fire pasta, limoncello, preserved lemons and lemonade. It was wonderful. The lemonade I poured with Samuel Adams Summer Ale - which, I thought sounded like beverage perfection, owing to the claim it is “brewed with lemon and grains of paradise.” Doesn’t that sound heavenly? It was. The combination, while sounding a bit off, is really exhilarative on a muggy day. So try this, and enjoy. I certainly did.


1 bottle Samuel Adams Summer Ale (available nationwide April – August) or any light ale
1 pint fresh lemonade (1 cup lemon juice, 2 cups simple syrup, water to taste)


Fill two frosted pint glasses half way with lemonade. Top, slowly, with the ale. Imbibe. It should end up in layers. My glassful was, it just didn't come out in the photos! Doh!

Makes two. Doubles, triples and quadruples nicely.


*I know, if you are a long time reader you might be wondering what that is all about. Well, it’s a long boring story, but after just four short months of dwelling this gorgeous, entertaining-friendly, large and breezy house, with a kitchen-to-die-for, troubles with the absolutely sadistic landlady have forced me to find solace elsewhere. Sigh. Good news is, due to her outrageously abusive nature, I’m supposedly getting back every penny I paid in rent these last four months! How awesome is THAT! I know! Pretty awesome. Still, moving is the worst. Sigh. Anyone know of a duplex for rent in the Mid-Wilshire/Bev Hills/WeHo area?

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Grains of Paradise: a West African spice with a pungent, peppery flavor. The seeds have a pungent, peppery taste. Grains of paradise are commonly employed in the cooking styles of West and North Africa. Today it is also used in the brewing of Samuel Adams Summer Ale and the distilling of Bombay Sapphire Gin. – Wikipedia

A shandy (shortened form of shandygaff) is a cocktail made from a mixture of beer (often ale) and a non-alcoholic beverage. The non-alcoholic beverage is usually lemonade in Europe and ginger ale in the Caribbean. The proportions of the two ingredients are adjusted to taste, normally half-and-half, although shandy sold in tins is typically much weaker, around 1 part beer to 10 parts lemonade. - Wikipedia

McDonald's, KFC, Tesco, Sainsbury's, Asda, Morrisons and Unilever were to pledge yesterday not to use soya illegally grown in the Amazon region in response to evidence that large areas of virgin forest are being felled for the crop. The companies say they will not deal with the four trading giants who dominate production in Brazil unless they can show they are not sourcing soya from areas being farmed illegally. The deal, brokered by Greenpeace which, in an investigation, linked the illegal destruction of the forest to large-scale soya farming financed by US-based commodity multinationals Cargill, ADM and Bunge. Investigators spent three years tracing the movement of soya from illegal plantations in the Amazon through the US-based firms to chicken factories in European countries. The Guardian

Labels: Drink of the Week