Summertime Drinks – MSAK Style

I love lemonade.

The ice cold, sour bite complimented by its sweet finish is both refreshing and comforting. Even someone like me who keeps carbohydrate intake at a minimum can make room for this summertime treat.

This following description from, Share Lemonade, captures in words exactly how I feel about lemonade: 

Not to get too existential here, but lemonade isn’t just a refreshing drink – it’s a mood. It’s the light shining through tree leaves on [a] warm summer day. It’s the sound of an acoustic guitar by a bonfire. It’s streaks of green left on the soles of your sneakers from freshly cut grass. It’s the swaying of a pontoon boat anchored off the lake shore. It’s dancing to a bassy beat without a care in the world.

Share Lemonade

Sign of summer

Lemonade, and for some of you, iced tea, have become synonymous with summer. Just the thought of them conjures images of lemonade stands constructed by entrepreneurial children on the side of the road and beads of sweat running down the sides of a cold pitcher of iced tea on your grandmother’s front porch. These are the memories of childhood and Americana and comfort. What could be wrong with them? Nothing, the way they were actually practiced back then, but…

modern industrial food system strikes again

Well, like everything else the modern industrial food system sunk its filthy claws into what used to be an occasional treat whose emotional nourishment outweighed any negligible nutritional detriment and bastardized it by:

1. swapping drinks which used to be made from just a few, fresh ingredients for all sorts of chemicals, refined (or worse, fake) sweeteners, preservatives, artificial colors, artificial flavors, and a host of other chemicals and,
2. engaging in marketing campaigns that convinced the public that lemonade and iced tea are not just an occasional treat but rather something that should be consumed on a regular basis. 

Even though the Americana nostalgia of these summertime treats from days of yore remain forefront in our minds, the reality has shifted substantially. The lemonade and iced tea we are drinking today are completely different foods from what they used to be and we drink entirely too much of them. 

What can be done?

Like everything else in our modern dietary landscape there are significantly more nourishing ways of creating food using traditional approaches. It is not difficult to make lemonade and iced tea completely from scratch at home. Doing so allows you to have complete control over all of the ingredients to ensure quality and nutritional value. It also re-introduces what I call “limiting mechanisms” that help ensure foods are kept at a certain level in our diets. 

Fresh lemons cost more than fake, powdered lemonade mix and they take more time to squeeze than simply scooping powder from a can and mixing it with water. The modern industrial food system has convinced us that the cost- and time-saving convenience it has created for us is a benefit. But, in my mind it is exactly what is wrong with today’s food system. With perceived convenience comes distancing from the real cost and real value of what lemonade and iced tea really are when made traditionally.

Creating lemonade and iced tea from scratch simultaneously ensures we are making the healthiest versions possible and reduces the quantity and frequency we are consuming it.

What can you do?

Best Practices

At the Modern Stone Age Kitchen, we are committed to making familiar foods as nourishing as they can possibly be. So, lemonade and iced tea fall right in our wheelhouse! Below are some best practices you can follow to help ensure what you are making for your family is safer, healthier, and more connected than anything you can purchase at a store.

And, if you want to make it even more meaningful, then both make and enjoy it together!

Lemonade:

1. Use exclusively fresh squeezed juice. Lemons should obviously be the base but supplementing with orange juice and lime juice adds complementary flavors.
2. Sweeten with honey. Taste as you go to ensure you only use the minimum necessary. 
3. Mix the honey with hot water before adding to the cold to make sure it is distributed well and doesn’t clump up.

Iced Tea:

Be aware of oxalates! Black teas have the highest oxalate content, followed by oolong, pu-erh, and green tea. Green tea is the lowest of the list but still high enough to consume in moderation. Soil and growing conditions, season, concentration, and steeping times all impact the oxalate concentrations in the final tea. According to Sally Norton (my go-to oxalate expert!) “Brewing tea is a steeping process that extracts only the soluble oxalate from the leaves. The insoluble oxalate crystals are discarded with the solids. Thus, 100% of the oxalate in tea is soluble and easily absorbed.”

1. Use herbal teas such as peppermint, chamomile, ginger, hibiscus, lavender, vanilla, and rooibos (beware – not all herbal teas are low in oxalates).
2. Shorten your steeping time. The amount of steeping time correlates with the amount of soluble oxalates present in the finished tea. Steeping for 5 minutes results in 2/3rds the amount of oxalates that steeping for 60 minutes does.
3. Limit matcha and other teas/drinks where you consume the entirety of the ground up leaf.
4. If sweetening make sure to use unrefined natural sweeteners such as honey.

Enjoy!

Make it from scratch, consume it in moderation for special occasions, and enjoy every guilt free sip! Or, if you don’t want to make it yourself come in and get a glass from us at the Modern Stone Age Kitchen. I can assure you that we are putting the same amount of thought and care into every squeeze of lemon that you would at home!

Currently serving up a lavender lemonade and hibiscus mint iced tea!