Fridays of Intestinal Fortitude: Honey Limeade!

Note: Fridays of Intestinal Fortitude is a weekly(ish) feature about food, food and more FOOD. No, I am not an expert, but I do enjoy talking about food prep, cooking food, eating food and making sweet love to food.  Okay, maybe not the "sweet love" part. After all, this is not meant to be an homage to 9 1/2 Weeks.

Recipe Index can be found here. 
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Last weekend, I went to the glorious town of Pratt, Kansas!  I am still working on that food post (which involves beef.  Lots and lots of BEEF) and thought I would skip posting this week.  However, I made some fresh limeade this morning and when I posted the snap on Instagram, I received so many requests for the recipe, that I thought it was worthy of a post.  Last year, I came across this limeade recipe -- I love the smoothness that the honey adds, but felt the recipe was too sweet for my taste.  So, I added a tad more honey (for the smoothness) and a bit more lime juice in my recipe.

Honestly?  You really cannot beat fresh-squeezed juice and there is really a reason why fresh-squeezed has a different flavor than what you buy in the store.  In fact, Food Renegade had a fascinating article on how the process of making orange juice homogenizes the flavor:

Making OJ should be pretty simple. Pick oranges. Squeeze them. Put the juice in a carton and voilà!

But actually, there is an important stage in between that is an open secret in the OJ industry. After the oranges are squeezed, the juice is stored in giant holding tanks and, critically, the oxygen is removed from them. That essentially allows the liquid to keep (for up to a year) without spoiling– but that liquid that we think of as orange juice tastes nothing like the Tropicana OJ that comes out of the carton.

I really enjoyed that article because it did not demonize Tropicana and the like -- there is a valid reason for how orange juice (and fruit juices, in general) are processed.

Man, I do love a fresh-squeezed limeade and it took me all of 10 minutes to make it.  We don't need to be making gallons of it anyway and I prefer it to be a special treat.   So, I will be sticking with fresh-squeezed,

Honey Limeade Recipe

Ingredients
5 cups water
2/3 cups sugar
3 tbs honey
1 1/4 cups of lime juice (5-7 limes, depending on the size of the limes)

Preparation
1. Pour sugar and honey into a pitcher with the water.  Mix well.

2. Squeeze limes! As I am squeezing, I continue to give the water/sugar/honey mixture quick swirls with the spoon, to ensure a good mixing.

3. Add the lime juice.  Mix well!!

Really, that is it!