Strawberry Lemonade Recipe

Strawberry Lemonade Recipe – This Strawberry Lemonade Recipe was the hit of our weekend picnic. And it was by far the easiest thing I made on the menu too! With only 4 ingredients and zero added sugar, this sweet drink is just as healthy as it is tasty! You can expect this lemonade to taste like summer. It’s so refreshing and delicious.

The Perfect Picnic Drink: Strawberry Lemonade Recipe

As the weather begins to warm up, we find ourselves spend more and more time outside. This past weekend, we spent the afternoon walking the local hiking trails and stretching our legs. The weather was perfect and the kids loved every minute of our outdoor time.

With more time outside comes the need for more easy, healthy snacks and picnic foods! Below are just a few of our current favorites for summer…

Here’s Our Picnic Menu:

• Grape, Watermelon and Cucumber Salad – Our delightful fruit salad is perfect for warm weather. It has a little kick of heat that you’re going to love.
• No Mayo Potato Salad – This is the PERFECT side dish to pack for an outdoor picnic.
• Hard Boiled Eggs and Sea Salt – Eggs are the easiest snack and so satisfying while doing outdoor activity. We kept our cold with an ice pack. Learn how to make hard-boiled eggs here.
• Organic Grass Fed Beef Sticks are perfect for an on-the-go snack.

How to Make the Healthiest Strawberry Lemonade Recipe

Making the Strawberry Lemonade Recipe was actually an afterthought for the picnic menu. But, if you are planning any summer gatherings the effort-to-impressiveness ratio doesn’t get much better than homemade Strawberry Lemonade. Especially on a hot sweltering day.

The way we make this the HEALTHIEST Strawberry Lemonade recipe is because we have chosen clean, whole ingredients.

#1: Use Organic Strawberries

While preferable, it’s unrealistic to buy totally organic 100% of the time. Not only can this get costly, but often times, organic is simply unavailable for many items. When it comes to strawberries, however, we highly urge you to choose organic if at all possible. This is because unfortunately, strawberries are on the top of the Dirty Dozen list by EWG year after year. Which means that non-organic strawberries use a tremendous amount of chemicals to help them grow. Plus, they are likely genetically modified too.

Besides the health components of organic strawberries, we would actually argue that organic strawberries taste sweeter and overall better as well! Because of all of these reasons, we highly recommend that you select organic strawberries for this recipe.

#2: Naturally Sweetened with Dates

Traditional strawberry lemonade recipes use at least 1 cup of refined sugar, if not more. While yes, white refined sugar is cheap and easy to use, it’s also one of the worst things you can consume. Refined sugar is full of health risks! Not only is it known to cause inflammation, it’s also incredibly addictive, and can contribute to your risk of numerous diseases. On top of all of this, it also holds zero nutritional value, so it just puts your health at risk for no good reason. Why no good reason? Because there are a multitude of natural sweetener alternatives out there that taste just as delicious, with health BENEFITS!

In this recipe, we chose to use dates as our natural sweetener. Dates are full of nutritional value, a great source of antioxidants, and a delicious and neutral tasting natural sweetener. Thanks to pureed dates, you don’t need a drop of added sugar to make your lemonade sweet.

#3: Use Real Lemons

While juice is never as nutritionally beneficial as the actual entire fruit, lemon and lime juice is an exception in our eyes. Lemons (and limes) are incredibly low sugar fruits, and are great for adding an extra tang to a variety of recipes. In this recipe, we juiced lemons from scratch for an extra fresh tasting, and healthy Recipe for Strawberry Lemonade!

How Do You Keep Recipe for Strawberry Lemonade Cold on a Picnic?

Any lemonade recipe or non-alcoholic drink can be kept ice cold for a picnic or any other outdoor outing simply by freezing the liquid in a zip-top bag.

Note: Alcohol doesn’t freeze so if you are planning on spiking your beverages you will want to add the alcohol when you serve the food.

We left the house at about 8 am and didn’t have the picnic until 1:30 or so and the Strawberry Lemonade Recipe was still somewhat frozen even all those hours later. I just used my hands to “massage” and soften the frozen pieces that were still in the zip-top bag before pouring the liquid into the mason jars.

Healthy Summer Drinks

You’ve probably been told not to “drink your calories”. While we don’t count our calories here at Clean Cuisine, this advice, in general, is grounded on truth. This is because most sweet or alcoholic drinks these days are loaded with refined sugar, and again, are empty calorie profiles!

Thankfully, the “don’t drink your calories” warning doesn’t apply to our recipes, as ours are simple, free of refined-sugar, and actually healthy! Here are a few of our favorite summer drinks…

Homemade Watermelon Juice Recipe: Watermelon Juice Recipe is much healthier than typical juice because it’s made made with the whole fruit. Turn it into a watermelon popsicle!

Lemon Margarita with Organic Tequila: Lemon Margarita has the best flavor when made with organic tequila, natural sweeteners, a bit of sea salt. The tasty Margarita ever!

Creamsicle Drink: Creamsicle Drink that tastes just like a real Creamsicle. This healthy version is dairy free with no refined sugar. It will blow you away!

Are you ready to learn how to make this easy Recipe for Strawberry Lemonade from home? Let’s get into it!

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