Strawberry Basil Lemonade

Ooh,  Mother's Day was great today!  We woke early, had breakfast and then headed out to the Hillcrest Farmer's Market.  It's by far the biggest one we've ever gone too and it's always a fun time.  This time, I got to splurge a little bit and I got 4 truffles and strawberry basil lemonade.  Usually, the lemonades are super tart and sugary, so I wasn't expecting it to be too refreshing, but oh my, it was delish!

I decided I'd try my hand at making my own.  I adapted a recipe from Food52 and I love it!!  I made single serving, then a small pitcher full and lastly, a concentrated version to freeze and add water later.

1 1/4 cup sugar
1 1/4 cup boiling water
3 cups quartered strawberries (about 16 oz.)
20 medium basil leaves, chopped
1 1/2 cup fresh lemon juice, 6-8 lemons

Juice the lemons until you get 1 1/2 cups, set aside.
Put the sugar in a heatproof bowl, pour the boiling water over the sugar and stir until combined, let cool.
Put 3 cups quartered strawberries into a blender/food processor, add the chopped basil and 1/4 cup of the sugar water.  Blend until really smooth.

To make:
Combine equal parts strawberry puree, lemon juice and sugar water (1 1/2 cups each). This makes a concentrate. To this add 3.5-4 cups cold water.  Serve with ice.

If make a single serving, put ice in a cup, add 3 T. each of strawberry puree, lemon juice and sugar water, add 1/2 cup cold water.

In the food52 recipe, they used 3:3:1or2 ratio.  I thought it needed more sugar, so I upped it.

UPDATE: After sitting in the fridge overnight, it tasted much more sugary than after I just made it.  I may try the actual food52 recipe next time.

Weekends 3/52

::weekends is a new series where I'll be documenting some of what we do on our weekends.  For us, that's Thursdays and Fridays::

This weekend was around Arya's 2nd birthday and we had Grandpa and Grandma Heller here to enjoy the great weather!  It's been an unusually warm winter and it hit 80 degrees in Coronado on Thursday, 1/16 (Happy Birthday Bridget!).  I'm not usually a beach kind of girl (as you can tell by me wearing jeans and a sweater to the beach), but I actually enjoyed myself and Arya had a good time too.  She played in the water, played with her sand toys and ran and ran and ran.  I've had this swimsuit for about 3 years now.  She's finally old enough to wear it!

Date Night: Sushi Making

I think this was our first date night. We went to the Balboa Wine and Cooking School at the Prado Restaurant and took a 3 hour sushi class. It wasn't as hands on as we thought it would be, but we still learned some valuable stuff. Sadly, these pictures aren't in any order. I haven't figured out how to make them go in order. The first picture is the last and the last picture is the first.

This is outside the restaurant in the Balboa museum area after the class.

This is Neil finishing up his California Roll (rice, seaweed, avocado, imitation crab)

This is one of the finished rolls with cucumber and burdock root (we would use carrot). THis time the seaweed is on the outside. (vegetarian roll)

vegetarian roll, I had ate 2 before taking the picture.

View of the bar and our teacher

Neils' mojito, water and teacher

Picture from outside our apartment. Have to say, I was looking pretty good :)