National Lemonade Day is when we honor that cool refreshing drink, lemonade!

Celebrate National lemonade day by getting creative with your favorite flavors and make pink lemonade, watermelon lemonade, iced tea lemonade, or any flavor you like. Just make sure you have plenty of lemons on hand as well as ice cubes, fresh water and sugar.

Regular lemonade is traditionally made with fresh squeezed lemons, water, sugar and ice. Simply use one cup of lemon juice, 2 cups of water and 2/3 to 1 whole cup of sugar, then pour the mixture over ice and enjoy!

Pink lemonade is made with the same basic lemonade recipe above but coloring it pink with grenadine. Pink lemonade actually originated in Greece, or so the story goes. Greek parents would have family gatherings and put red wine in the adult’s lemonade. The pink color served a dual purpose – the pink color distinguished the alcolic drink from the kids drink by color and the adults had a drink they enjoyed because of the alcohol.

Hard Lemonade is made by adding potent clear alcohol to the lemonade, such as tequila, gin, vodka, white rum, etc.

Here are a few more variations of lemonade you can enjoy on National Lemonade day. From Wikipedia:

* Various fruits, such as strawberries and raspberries can be added for color and flavor. A small amount of beet juice results in pink lemonade with little change in flavor.

* Herbs such as mint, borage, lavender, and lemon verbena can change the aroma of the drink.

* Including the peels, bruised and sliced, gives more bite and a stronger aroma.

* Other citrus fruits can be used, including lime, orange, and grapefruit. Sugar and water content should be adjusted to taste. In American parlance, these are not technically lemonades, but limeade, orangeade, etc.

And here’s my own recipe: Use the regular lemonade recipe above and add a dash of cinnamon or use a cinnamon stick as garnish in the glass. Crush a mint leaf with your fingers to release the flavor and toss it into the glass as well. Mmmm, cinnamon mint lemonade!

Happy National Lemonade Day!

Today August 20 is National Lemonade Day is a post from: The Inquisitr

The South Norwalk, Connecticut based Lemonade’s offers products from various affiliates (including AT&T, Apple and Wal-Mart). Users sign up then decide what products they want to show in their widget, then paste the code onto their own webpage or blog. The service also supports MySpace and Facebook, so users can add widgets onto their profile pages as well. As with any affiliate program, users get a share of each sale, somewhere around 5-15% of the sale price.

Lemonade was founded in 2007 by former employers of Modem Media, and was named by Time as the Top Website of 2007.

Out of the box the widget isn’t super pretty (working demo top right) but as a UGC offering it has appeal. Setup is easy with users searching for items then using a drag and drop process to place items in their widget. Embedding options have a focus on social networks with general blogs being listed under Blogger (no idea why) but again, a straight forward process. The only remaining question: will people actually buy items listed in the widget? I couldn’t find the split or it mentioned, but it’s fairly safe to say that Lemonade stand is betting people will because taking a cut of the affiliate payment is their business model. Worth a look.

Lemonade Offers Customizable Retail Widgets is a post from: The Inquisitr