So, what does one do when life (or a family member) gives you lemons?  Well, if you’re me (or anything like me – you poor thing), you make Vodka Raspberry Lemonade – Freshly Squeezed of course.

My husband’s uncle (I suppose that makes him my uncle too, but whatever) gave us a bag of deeelicious lemons the other day and Chris (that’s my DH) suggested we make lemonade.  In a rare Martha Stewart inspired moment, I promptly brought our juicer down from the top shelf of our cupboard and set out to making freshly squeezed lemonade.  Wanting to get it just right, I also set out to making Simple Syrup – it really is simple which I think is rare for a name to actually mean that which it is, but I digress.  The end result was actually puckeringly good – we like it slightly sour, but mostly just tart.  To make it even better, I added Raspberry Vodka and some frozen raspberries.

Here’s what I did – keeping in mind that when experimenting I NEVER measure:

I filled a regular size saucepan with water and dumped A LOT of sugar and honey into it (to taste of course) and brought it to a boil.  That, my friends is the pure ease and simpleness of making simple syrup!

Juiced about a dozen plus lemons in our fancy shmancy 1970′s juicer that my Mom gave me when I moved into my first apartment.  It has held up quite well and the bonus is that just about every piece and part can be put in the dishwasher.

Dumped the lemon juice in a pitcher, dumped the simple syrup in the pitcher and whallah – Tasty Tart Lemonade.

Now…into a shaker goes: LOTS of ice, 1 and 1/2 jiggers of raspberry vodka, 1 jigger of triple sec, a few scoops of frozen raspberries, fill with freshly squeezed lemonade – SHAKE SHAKE SHAKE, SHAKE YOUR BOOTAY, SHAKE YOUR BOOTAY – pour it all (sure even the ice cubes) into your glass of choice (I choose the largest pretty glass I can find that will hold the entire shakers worth of this deeelicious drink) – done!

It is quite yummy – a little tart, a little bit kid-like in its kool-aid’ness, definitely refreshing!