Recipe: Maple lemonade

This recipe comes from the Master Cleanse lemonade diet.  It's not my place to tell you to do it, but I've actually done it twice, which is extremely difficult to do when you cook for a living.  The cleanse changed my life in a very unexpected way - it's when I switched to "C" grade maple syrup (#3) and never turned back.  The lemonade portion of the diet is not only delicious, it's nutritious (for the duration of the diet, the lemonade provides you with all your essential vitamins).  I've made the lemonade off and on ever since just as a refreshing summer drink with the added benefit that it also serves as a multivitamin.  Your kids will never know what hit them.  

The recipe following is for one person's daily intake as per the diet, but if you aren't doing it, it's for a two litre jug of tasty lemonade.  Of course, if you are just making it as a summer drink, you may want to omit the cayenne and feel free to adjust the amounts to your taste - at least you aren't cooling off with store bought yellow sugar water.  As well, living in Vancouver, I proudly drink our Capilano fresh tap water - if your tap water is good, use it and save a plastic bottle.  Careful not to spill any of your Meyer Limoncello in there, that would be a downright shame.

You will need:

60oz / 1.77L                      bottled / filtered water (or mountain fresh)

12Tbs (6.09oz) / 180ml    grade "B" or "C" (#2 or #3) organic maple syrup

12Tbs (6.09oz) / 180ml    fresh squeezed organic lemon juice

1/2tsp / 2.5ml                    cayenne pepper

Method:

 - if you are cleansing, or just like it, microplane some of the lemon rind to add in as extra fibre

 - juice the lemons, remove the seeds, but keep the pulp

 - add the maple syrup, cayenne and water and mix well

 - keep it away from the limoncello

 - start sippin'