Every week we’ll post a recipe that we both made. This week’s recipe was Strawberry Meyer Lemonade Spritzer, found over at uTry.it. Printable recipe can be found at the bottom of this post.

Robyn’s Take:

This week’s recipe was Nance’s choice, and I love how simple it is. I was all psyched to get it made because I was like, “This is going to take ten seconds tops!”

Yeah, well, there was an issue. Isn’t there ALWAYS? I went to the grocery store with my list, and would you believe there were NO Meyer lemons to be found? Not a one. Apparently they don’t carry them. So I bought a regular lemon, and then I bought a lime, intending to try the recipe with both of those. Then I got home, and I reconsidered. I really prefer to make recipes as written the first time around (it doesn’t always work out that way, but that’s how I PREFER to do it). I knew that Fresh Market (which is wayyyyyy on the other side of Huntsville) stocks Meyer lemons, and luckily I was headed in that direction to pick up Fred’s birthday cake, so I swung by to get my Meyer lemon on.

I shouldn’t be allowed in Fresh Market, honestly. That store is WAY too awesome, and I must have wandered around in there for an hour, throwing things I did NOT need into my basket. But everything was so FRESH and CLEAN and PRETTY that I couldn’t help myself. A girl is only so strong!

I did get my Meyer lemon, in any case. In fact, I grabbed five of them just in case this recipe turned out AWESOME and I needed to make it repeatedly. You never know, right?

The ingredients:

Strawberries, Meyer lemon, agave, ice (not pictured), and sparkling mineral water.

The recipe has you mash the strawberries for both servings of the spritzer and then divide it into two glasses, but I figured I’d just do half the strawberries, put them in one glass and then the other half and put those in the other glass. I know, I’m overthinking this, but that’s what I do best.

Stupidly, I used a too-small dish to crush the first set of strawberries, and of course one piece flew out of the dish, ran around on the counter, and then committed suicide by leaping from the countertop.

Stupid strawberry.

So I switched to a bigger bowl, and crushed the hell out of those strawberries.

Put those strawberries in one glass, and then crushed the strawberries for the other glass.

Don’t be jealous of my fancy glasses.

Then I cut the Meyer lemon in half and juiced each half (half for each glass), while the rest of the ingredients looked on judgmentally.

Two tablespoons of Agave (which I have never used before) in each glass.

Stir to combine…

Add ice (the recipe called for two cups of ice, but I thought that was more than was needed – though I guess if I’d used bigger glasses, that would have worked).

And add sparkling mineral water to the top.

Miz Poo was like, “Hmm. Needs catnip.”

And Logie was like “WHY AM I UP ON THE COUNTER AND WHY IS THAT GLASS FIZZING AT ME?! DO NOT LIKE.”

The verdict? I liked it; Fred didn’t care for it (he said it was “not bad”, but after a few sips he gave me the rest of his). I plan to make some more later today, since I have everything on hand that I need to make more, but I don’t know if I’d go out specifically to buy the ingredients to make more. Well, strike that: I know I wouldn’t make the trip to South Huntsville just to get the Meyer lemons for this.

When I make it later, though, instead of crushing the strawberries in a shallow dish, I’m going to run them through my mini food processor. Pieces of strawberry kept getting caught in my straw, and that shit annoys me.

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Nance’s Take:

Okay, I don’t even have a reason for why I picked this recipe beyond the fact that it was hot the day that I was looking for recipes and I thought the picture was pretty.

Last Sunday I went to our local grocery store in search of Meyer lemons to make this drink.  This particular grocery store is one that I seldom visit because I think their prices are ridiculous.  And they confirmed my opinion when I saw the sign that said, “Meyer Lemons – $3.99 ea.”  EACH.  THREE DOLLARS AND NINETY-NINE CENTS EACH.  For a lemon!  Are you fucking kidding me?  Who pays that kind of money for a single lemon?  Apparently someone in the suburbs around Pittsburgh because they were all sold out of them.  Not one single Meyer Lemon to be found.  This is where I have to admit something shameful:  I would have paid that ridiculous price for the lemon just so I would have it for this recipe.  I need my ass kicked.  Sigh.

I ended up with a bag of regular ol’ lemons from Sam’s Club®.  Good enough for me (and my budget).

This lemon lacked character.

I suppose it’s obvious that I was bored.

I did not create a conversation between these two in my head. I wanted to, but Shirley (tube-top alert) yelled at me for playing with the food. I’m an adult and can do what I want, dammit!

Wistful lemon thinks my mom should shut the hell up. Even if she is right because OHMYGAWD, what a mess it was rolling these lemons around before we juiced them. Shh, don’t tell her she was right because I don’t even want to hear about it.

Shirley went out shopping and bought this juicer just for this recipe. I told her it was a waste of money because we’re not going to start juicing anything. We live in Pennsylvania and are not able to walk out to our orange tree to pluck fresh fruit in order to have mimosas for brunch, ya know! I get my juice just like everybody else…in a bottle.

That is Shirley’s hand juicing the lemon. She wouldn’t let anybody else play with it. Asshole. You can thank me for cropping out her body as she was wearing a fluorescent pink tube-top and a pair of blue jean shorts (jorts) with a broken zipper. You’re welcome.

If you go to the original web site, you’ll see that the recipe says to “crash” the strawberries. I had no idea what crashing a strawberry is and nobody in the house knew what it meant either. I read the printable recipe that Robyn typed up and saw that she corrected it to say crush. Wow. Dumbass, thy name is Nance. And Rick. And Shirley. Hee!

I divided the strawberries into the glasses (with ice already added) and this is where I believe I started to get annoyed because it was taking too much time. We used one and a half of the regular lemons to replace the one Meyer lemon that the recipe called for.

Agave. What every good mother gives her kids instead of high fructose syrup, honey and sugar. My kids have never tasted this shit because mommy blogging wasn’t in vogue when I was raising them so I had no idea. I like it, but just like anything else that is good for you it’s more expensive.

Okay, it’s almost ready to drink (we used Perrier® sparkling water because we’re fancy that way) and I will admit that I was already writing this entry in my head. Bashing this goddamn drink because enough with the crashing, dividing, juicing and measuring already!

I bought these straws from Bed, Bath and Beyond® a long time ago. The bottom is made that way for stirring things. They came in handy with this drink.

As I said above, I started writing this entry in my head while I was making this. But here’s where I admit that I was wrong. Yes, I said WRONG. This drink is FABULOUS. Seriously. Everything combined beautifully in order to make an excellent drink* and I could not believe how well it turned out. I would gladly go through all of it again to make this drink because I think it was totally worth it. The family felt the same way.

A little bit of work, but definitely a winner!

*An excellent drink that could possibly be even more excellent with a shot of vodka if you’ve had a hard day.  Just trying to be helpful.  heh.