Strawberry Basil Lemonade Spritzer

Happy Saturday, folks!  I had a fantastic spring day wine tasting in Napa with a wonderful friend of mine.   

I made a nice light sparkly (and hydrating) spring drink for us to sip along the way: a strawberry basil lemonade spritzer.

I thought it would be a great way to start a day before wine tasting – sparkly water to hydrate us, and lemon, which is incredibly alkalizing (surprising, I know!), to prepare us for a day of drinking (not alkalizing.)    

serves 4
3 C strawberries
6 lemons
a few sprigs basil
4 C sparkling water

Take the greens off your strawberries, peel your lemons, and then juice both of those.  Pour the juice in a pitcher with the sparkling water and the basil.

That’s it!

A couple extra tips: 

Sweetness: hopefully your strawberries are sweet enough to balance out the tartness from the lemons.  If they’re not, go ahead and add your favorite kind of sweetener to taste.

Travel version: unless you’re drinking this pretty quickly, leave the sparkling water out (it’ll get flat.)  You can take a little bit of the strawberry-lemon juice and a stem of basil to work in a mason jar and pop open a bottle of sparkling water there when you’re ready for it.

Change it up!  You can change this recipe so much – pick whatever fruit you like the best, or whatever is the prettiest or cheapest at your market.  Some ideas:

Fruit: raspberries. blueberries. peaches. mango. pineapple. watermelon. cantaloupe. kiwi.
Herbs: mint. tarragon. rosemary.
Make it a lime-ade or orange-ade instead of lemonade, or leave that part out completely! 

 
Nutrition facts per serving: Calories: 73; Calories from Fat: 3; Total Fat: 0.4g; Sodium: 5mg; Total Carbohydrates: 19.8g; Dietary Fiber: 5.0g; Sugars: 9.0g; Protein: 2.1g