Father's Day Feast + Beach

Yesterday was father's day. My dad was a great guy.  He loved his family, tennis, his nephew Hal and food.  I think I got my love for food from my dad.  He would drive miles for his favorite fare and always loved trying new restaurants, new bakeries and would drive for days to get his favorite pecan sticky bun.

Our day today started out with a visit to the cemetery.  The boys and I picked up sticky buns and ate them with my dad and each boy shared their favorite stories about "Poppy".  We sat around, ate our sticky buns, drank our hot chocolates and had a really, really good laugh.  This was the first time we visited him without crying.

We came home and packed up the car for a day at the beach.  I made a feast; three different kind of sandwiches, string bean salad, couscous with asparagus, peas, feta and pine nuts, cookies and a delicious strawberry lemonade.  I must admit, I have never made homemade lemonade.  Shame on me.  This lemonade was so easy and so good.  Homemade lemonade will be a fixture in our fridge from now on!  The only thing missing from the drink today was some Grey Goose Vodka!  Isaac and I went for a long walk and collected rocks, Eli spent the day in the water, and Levi dug with the shovel, jumped in the water, and ate all the cookies.  What else is new??

Miguel's had few requests today.  No gifts.  Spend the day together, as a family (his family joined us) and to not have to do any dishes.  I think we did a good job with carrying out his wishes.  It was a great day!

Strawberry Lemonade
original recipe from The Sweet Melissa Baking Book
yield: 7-8 cups

fresh strawberry sauce
1 pint of strawberries, rinsed and hulled
2 Tbls. sugar
1 tsp. fresh lemon juice
2 Tbls. water

lemonade
3/4 cup sugar
1 cup water
1 cup fresh lemon juice
4 1/2 cups cold sparkling water ( I used Pelligrino )

instructions:
strawberry sauce: in the food processor, puree all the ingredients until smooth. strain the berry mixture into a clean bowl and discard the seeds.  cover and refrigerate.

lemonade: put the water and the sugar in a small sauce pan and bring to a slight boil.  make sure all the sugar has dissolved.  turn heat down and let cook for 3 minutes.  In a pitcher combine the lemon juice and the cooled simple syrup (sugar and water mixture).  place in the fridge.

when ready to serve, combine the strawberry sauce and the lemonade and mix thoroughly in a pitcher.  add the sparkling water and some ice cubes ( i made mint ice cubes by putting mint leaves in my ice cube trays - it was pretty ).