Mum's Summer Drinks

The Summer holidays may be over and the kids back to school but the Summer feeling lives on!  Hot sun, water fights and raging thirst.  I scourered my recipe book shelf for my Mum's old recipe collection which dates back to before she married.  I was devestated that I couldn't find it and cried when it appeared on a different bookshelf!

The cooling, refreshing flavours I so desperately craved were homemade Lemonade and Gingerbeer.

Join me in my childhood indulgences and enjoy part of my youth!

Mum's Lemonade

Ingredients:

4lbs sugar
1 quart water
2oz Tartaric acid
2 tsp essence lemon to 1 gill water

Method:

• The water and the sugar are mixed first and heated (but not boiled)
• Then cooled - when almost cold again add in 1 gill of water, Tartaric acid and lemon essence
• Stir well

Mum's Gingerbeer

This wonderfully sociable "grow and share plant" works in a similar way to a friendship cake, you divide it and pass a bit on to someone you care about.

Ingredients for the Gingerbeer Plant:

2oz Bakers yeast (or 1/2oz dried yeast)
1/2 pint tepid water
2 tsp sugar
2 tsp ground ginger

Feeding the Plant:

• Every day for 6 days add 1 tsp sugar and 1 tsp ginger
• Every 7th day strain the liquid off the plant and keep the plant and the liquid
• Dissolve 1lb sugar in 1 pint of boiling water
• Add 4 pints cold water and the juice of 2 lemons
• Add the liquid strained from the plant and bottle
• It's better drunk after 7 days

To the Plant that is left:

• Add 1 pint cold water and mix well
• Divide into 2 equal parts, keep 1 half and either give or throw the other half away
• To the part you have kept add 2 tsp sugar and 2 tsp ginger and continue as above for 6 days