The Story of Cherry Limeade

Once upon a time there was a girl who, while selling beef and pork at the local farmer's market, was forced to stare at delicious cherries one long hot summer day.  This forced the girl to buy 8 pounds of cherries for $5 at the end of the market - the deal of the century!  Or so she thought.  She didn't know that 8 pounds of cherries seemed to multiply while sitting in her fridge.  She didn't know that after eating what seemed like a pound she would be tired of eating them.  She didn't know she would spend hours of google trying to find a way to get rid of them use them up.  So, that was the story of how this started - the girl is me and the story is true - can you believe 8 pounds of fresh, delicious, local cherries for only $5?   $5 is a bargain if I use them all up but $5 is a waste of money if I let them go bad. So, I searched ways to use up the cherries and came across this Strawberry Lemonade concentrate recipe - YUM!!  Don't know how I found it since it does not contain cherries but I decided to give it a try with cherries instead of strawberries.

I washed and took the stems off all the cherries. 

I let them dry in a salad spinner (since I don't have one of those fancy colanders).

Then I pitted them.  I will be honest - this sucked, took 2 hours, AND dyed my hands reddish.  If I ever do this again I will buy a pitter. 

I measured out 2 cups then chopped them.  I then realized that I needed a blender and drove to my mom's to try to steal borrow hers. 

The borrowed blender and the start of the recipe below. 

Here is the recipe:

Cherry Puree:

2 cups pitted cherries, roughly chopped

2 tbs. sugar

1. Put the cherries and sugar in a blender and blend until smooth.  

Cherry Limeade Concentrate:

3/4 cup cherry puree (recipe above - you can freeze the left over for later)

3/4 cup sugar

3/4 cup lime juice (for lemonade use 1 cup lemon juice)

1. Mix ingredients together.

2. Freeze or serve with 5 cups cold water.

I made both lemonade and limeade and the limeade was my favorite!!  I also tried to freeze the concentrate in ice cube trays to use later but that didn't work - maybe you will have better luck with that. 

It was so easy to make (minus the whole 2 hour cherry pitting nightmare) and turned out delicious!!  I will be making this again!! 

Oh, and one more thing - I didn't take any end pictures (or any middle pictures) but it did look just as good at it tasted so if you could just picture the end product in this fancy glass but with limes instead of lemons and cherries instead of strawberries that would be great - thank you!

What is your favorite summer beverage?