vitamin C

Steve had a post about a recent study showing alcohol consumption lowering the risk of developing Type 2 diabetes and that got me drinking. But not just anything. As I said in my earlier post, my garden is there to provide me endless distractions. One form is in homegrown citrus. My Meyer Lemon is coming into production and that means 1 thing - homemade lemonade. Well, 2 things really because that homemade lemonade makes one heckuva margarita. Here's how it works.

Step 1 - Obtain Meyer Lemon tree, plant it and forget about it.

Check.

Step 2 - Obtain Jack LaLanne Power Juicer. I'm not kidding. A year or so back, we were sitting around flipping channels and came across a friggin' infomercial with Jack hawking his juicer. I laughed and went to keep flipping channels. My wife and son protested. Seriously, we sat there watching this cheesy sales pitch but it worked. A short time later, we got our juicer. But it was a bit of a pain. My wife and son loved it but they weren't the ones cleaning the stupid thing. So I was going to send it back unless I could come up with a good reason to keep it. Fortune smiled and my dad had more Meyer Lemons than he knew what to do with. History was made and on to the next step. Check.

Step 3 - juice the suckers and add alcohol.

Here are the recipes.

Lemonade

* 4 Meyer Lemons (makes about 1 cup of lemon juice). They're sweeter than the average lemon and much juicier (thought to be a cross between a lemon and an orange) so other lemons may require more.

* 1 cup simple syrup but when the Meyers are in full ripening mode, I cut the ratio to 1/2 cup sugar to 1 cup water. Otherwise, it's too sweet.

* 3 cups cold water.

PS - For an even more interesting drink, substitute one cup of water with 1 cup of fresh squeezed oranges. One caveat, you have to drink it all that night. The orange juice goes a bit acrid the next day.

Margarita courtesy of my mom. I'm not sure how she came up with this concoction but I don't even like margaritas. But I love this one. One taste of this, and you'll not drink that high fructose corn syrup crap mixed with tequila again.

In a typical 12 oz glass add:

* 1 shot Jose Cuervo tequila (come on, this is Texas after all)

* 1 shot Grand Imperial. Yes, Imperial. I can't hardly spell Grand Marnier and I certainly can't afford it. So the knock off of Imperial works great.

* 1 shot Tuaca. I have no idea what this is. According to their website, it's an alcohol with orange and vanilla. Whatever. When you combine it with the other three, it's wonderful.

* Add a couple of ice cubes and fill up the remaining glass space with homemade lemonade.

Oh, yeah, this is a blog about med school so I guess I should give something medically. Vitamin C catalyzes the reaction which hydroxylates proline residues in collagen. That's good. And there are also some claims that it may augment the production of monoamine neurotransmitters, ie the feel good things like serotonin. I don't know how strong the data is behind that. Vitamin C is claimed to do everything under the sun but one thing is sure, the homemade margarita helps my mood.