Lemon and limes

It's been a challenging few months. From Belgium to Barcelona, I have decided to move again. This time, I took it home stateside. I can't really complain too much. I'm camped out near a beach with warm sunny weather. I have been on a role with the sparkling sunny weather beverages. Lest anyone be confused that I only drink Belgian beers (imo - the world's best), I love lime and lemon based sparkly mocktails.

Owning a SodaStream has been the inspiration for nearly all of these fine sparkly beverages (fine bevy of beverages, too much?). I use the device to make sparkling water.

I'm sitting on a patio wearing a seersucker jumper and making notes to myself to not have dairy. If you can digest lactose, fresh ripe cantaloupe and vanilla-bean ice cream blended with a bit of milk is a delicious milk shake. I've had so much fun reading all of the lovely bloggers that show up daily/weekly in my reader, sometimes I really do feel like I should lay this whole thing to rest, but you give me so much inspiration from gorgeous bags, to more lemon-lime yummies, to ex-pat travel delights from Germany, and vidalia onion soup which has me remembering how cold it could be in Belgium, to new cookbooks I am looking forward to ordering.

I did, upon returning, rejoice that I would be reunited with my kitchen appliances, and to that effect, I've decided that to root myself to a place for a while, I'm going to do some variety of canning adventures to bring the Americana back in me. Stay tuned and hopefully suntanned (somewhere).

Limeade with mint and blueberries
Yield: 1 serving, in a lowball glass (or another)

Ingredients:
half of a fresh lime
few mint sprigs
1 tsp sugar (optional)
ice
sparkling water
blueberries for garnish

Directions:
Squeeze half the lime in a glass and add 1 tsp of sugar. Stir to dissolve (will still be grainy). Muddle in the mint by crushing the mint sprigs with a spoon with the lime-sugar juice. Place ice cubes in the glass, and top it all off with some sparkling water. Give a quick stir, garnish with blueberries and serve immediately.

A simple syrup (equal parts sugar and water heated in a small sauce pan to dissolve all the sugar) can be made ahead of time and placed in the fridge.