mutteringhousewife

There are many fine things about a hot day. You can get all your washing done, including doonas and school bags. You’ll be getting your money’s worth from the pool. And you can get some use out of your brand new blender.

Making homemade lime slushies takes a little preparation. First, you need to organise for your kids to get you a really excellent blender for Christmas. “Oh thanks kids, that’s EXACTLY what I wanted!”. Well, they benefit too, it’s not that bad. Then you need to make a lime syrup. Normally you can make a syrup for soft drink minutes before serving it, it doesn’t matter if it’s still hot because you can top it up with ice and soda and no one will notice. But to make a slushie you need the syrup to be cold, and if possible the glasses too.

So get hold of a whole lot of limes while they’re on special. Normally I’d juice citrus for a syrup, but these ones were tiny (that’s why they were cheap), so I went for a different approach. I roughly peeled the limes with a small knife and put them whole into the blender. There were about twelve of the little guys. I also put in an orange and a lemon, similarly treated, both to bulk it up and also because lime by itself is a pretty strong taste.

Meanwhile you have dissolved two cups of caster sugar in a cup of water over some heat in a saucepan. Balance a large wire sieve over the saucepan. Blend up the citrus in your super powerful blender. Don’t worry about deseeding or getting all the white bits off, you have a life to live, just blend it! Then tip the resulting mush into the sieve over the saucepan. You’ll need to squash it through with a spoon or your fingers. Having had a lot of experience with feline effluvium, I can tell you that what’s left in the sieve looks a lot like cat sick. Make sure you’ve squeezed as much liquid as you can be bothered getting out of it before tipping it into the compost. With any luck you’ve added about another cup of liquid to the syrup. Decant it into a jug and stick it in the fridge.

To make the slushie, tip about two cups of crushed ice into the blender and press the ice crush button. It’ll work with ice cubes too, but will need some poking with the plastic poking stick. My blender gives a result that looks a lot like snow. Fill up two glasses with this, drizzle syrup on top, then a bit more snow on top. Serve with a teaspoon to any damp little boys you have sitting in front of your TV playing Lego Lord of the Rings on the Wii while having a break from swimming. Assure the little friend that it doesn’t need to be bright green to be lime flavoured. Take orders for the next round of syrup flavours, I’ll be making cola next. Then raspberry, but with frozen raspberries, fresh ones are way too expensive for syrup. Interestingly, the kids love my cola syrup in ice block form, but not as a soda. We haven’t tried it in slushie form yet.