When life hands you lemons, make lemonade. Yesterday life handed me 10 lemons for $2, but it also handed me 6oz of raspberries for $1.25. Haymarket is a wonderful place.
How can I turn this into a half gallon of a tasty beverage? Preferably without much sugar?
Go back to the store, get a thing of Crystal Light and keep your mouth shut?
ETA, I just took a look on All Recipes. I searched for “Raspberry Lemonade” and the only recipe that came up for Raspberry Lemonade had, as it’s first ingredient “1 (12 fluid ounce) can frozen raspberry lemonade concentrate”, so you probably don’t want that, huh.
Take one cup of water and 1 cup of sugar. Put them in them up in a small saucepan on the stove at medium heat until the sugar has completely dissolved. Stir occasionally. I used to skip this step when making lemonade but I do it every time now. Optional: Put a little lemon zest into syrup. It adds a little zing to the final product but you will have some sediments floating to the bottom of your glass.
1 cup of freshly squeezed lemon juice.
Put your raspberries into the food processor and obliterate them.
Mix the lemon juice, raspberries and syrup with about 4 cups of water.
I forgot to add straining the berries. I don’t strain because it doesn’t bother me (and I like my lemonade w/ extra pulp) so I forget that others aren’t like me.
You can also just run the puree through a regular ol’ fine or medium mesh wire strainer, and push it through with a wooden spoon. I haven’t gotten around to buying myself a chinois, but the cheapo strainer works fine. I do the same thing for soups and sauces that I need to be perfectly smooth.
If you want a thinner, clearer lemonade, you can macerate the berries with sugar instead. Mix the berries, sugar and strips of lemon zest together, let sit for anywhere from 30 minutes to overnight, then strain. Use the raspberry syrup to make your lemonade and use the raspberries as a dessert topping or faux jam.