~ Fresh Squeezed ~

This is a picture story about ‘keeping it real.’

It started when I was reading a foodie blog, and was thinking, “Aw, hell, even I could do that.”

So I thought I’d test that theory and create a picture tutorial for you about making fresh lemonade with nothing but My Captain’s Android Phone’s Camera, my scarred kitchen counter, and a few tools I’ve had forever….

…including my plastic juicing cup, a decade old, from The Dollar Tree.

I even decided to be ‘real’ and show how I put my homemade lemonade concentrate in an old pickle jar.  At least I think it used to hold pickles.  To be honest, I have no idea what its origin was.  Let’s just hope it wasn’t pig knuckles or something….

I started to zest my citrus, when I scraped my hand on the dagnab zester.   I was trying to take the photos one-handed because I don’t have a tripod for My Captain’s phone, and I clearly have no idea what I’m doing.

Panicking, I  checked myself for abrasions, contusions, lacerations, or warts.  Because I realized that this was going on the INTERNET where I wouldn’t want something to come back and haunt me.  …like that OTHER thing ….

And then I was distracted with the fact that the human thumb is really such an amazing tool for communicating.  “A-Okay,” says this little guy!  And then I realized that my ‘naturalistic french manicure’ is about as completely natural as the very chemicals they used to create it and vowed never to spend money on it again.  Until my Varmint asks me to.  And then I’ll immediately cave in because she has me wrapped around her finger.

But I finally zested all of my citrus and thought the bowl of zest sure was pretty.

And since I’d finished zesting, I thought I’d better prove that truly the only thing in the zest bowl WAS zest…see?  All the skin on my highly communicative digit is still intact and free of hemorrhage.  Though it is strangely pink.  Why do they call Caucasians ‘white?’  We’re not white.  We’re more often pink…and in my case, freakishly carnation colored.

Moving on, I began to slice the fruit…again, very hard to do with one hand.  I’m lucky my freaky carnation-colored fingers are all still intact.

And then my scary vulture-like claw came into view and began doing rather violent things to the poor lemon halves.  It scared me, and I’m ATTACHED to the dingdang thing.

I surveyed the corpses, and wondered if I should show evidence of the sheer force and magnitude of my Carnation Claw.

And the entrails were caught in my dollar-valued juicing cup.  MmmMmmMM.

But baby, look at this.  PURE GOLD.  Lemon and Lime juice, fresh from it’s origin.

And the carcasses?  I wasn’t done with them.  Their scent in the sink’s disposal sure covered up the smell of canned cat food beautifully.

I took a picture of my sugar substitute of choice: Xylitol.  A naturally occurring sugar alcohol…it has the look, the texture, the taste of sugar.  I use it often.  It’s only downfall?  It’s a natural sugar alcohol, which means it is digested in the small intestine, and too much of it can cause explosive diarrhea.  Please don’t ask me how I know this.

So I mixed Xylitol in with the zest.

And thought it looked awfully purty.

And added my freshly squeezed juice.

And made a beautiful slurry.

But then, I tasted it.  It needed some of the real deal.  I have to be honest.  I don’t want to lie to you.  Once our trust is broken, how could you ever read anything else from me with a straight face?  (Ahem.)

So I added a little bit of naughty sugar.  Forgive me.  If I really truly could, I would behave gastronomically.  But if you’ve ever seen my figure, you’ll know I can’t.  Don’t judge.

Here we add our lucky pickle jar to the photographs.  It’s handy to keep your pickle jars, you know.  They are truly the unsung workhorses to any real woman’s kitchen.  Unless it’s a pig’s knuckle jar, in which case THEY are truly the unsung…oh never mind.

In the concentrate went.

And I thought this shot of the concentrate looking down from above was lovely….until Critter informed me that it made him think of something he’d hacked up once…which made me wonder exactly where that thing he may have hacked up is now….

And I grabbed a completely clean and sterile bottle from the recycling bin.

And, after washing the bejeezus out of it, I filled it with Ice, Filtered Water, and about an eighth of a cup of my concentrate.   And I shook it, and I shook it, and I shook it.  My entire body was jiggling, which is how I know I was doing it right.

And then I gave it to my Beloved, who had just happened to come upstairs from working on the project in the basement.  He had his work hat on.  How do I know it’s specifically his work hat?

Because it has a flashlight on its bill.  Very handy, eh?  I wish I had a camera like that.  If I did, I could take pictures constantly, no matter what I was doing.  Think of the tutorials I could do with that!  Think of the volume of posts!  Think of the shock value of true reality blogging!  Think of the lawsuits!

Anyway, I took a picture of My Captain’s happy thirst-quenched face, when he decided I had had his phone long enough.

Which, of course, ended my tutorial.

I hope you all got everything you needed from it.  I hope my efforts are not in vain, and my teachings have somehow helped you achieve a higher form of enlightenment.

Otherwise you’ve just wasted several minutes of your life you can never have back…and that is very, very sad.