You can also use ready-made ice tea.

Slush Drink

4 tea bags
2 cups boiling water
5 cups cold water
1 (12 oz) can frozen orange juice
1 (12 oz) can frozen lemonade
1 (12 oz) can frozen limeade
2-1/2 cups rum, vodka, or other liquor
7-Up or ginger ale

Soak tea bags in boiling water for 20 minutes. Add remaining ingredients. Add 2-1/2 cups of vodka or your other favorite liquor. Mix in a covered container and freeze (because there's liquor, it won't freeze solid).

Scoop into glasses, filling half full. Add 7-Up or ginger ale to remaining half of glass.

*May substitute the orange juice with a peach drink or fruit punch.

Perfectly balanced lemonade (adapted from The Joy of Cooking)

12 T juice of fresh lemons
1 3/4 cups sugar
8 cups water

Make simple sugar by dissolve sugar in boiling water. Let it cool and add the lemon juice to it. I add sliced lemons to the pitcher for garnish, but it may also add a bit more tartness.

Robin's note: Since this recipe is sized down from the original bulk lemonade recipe, it ends up being a bit more than a 1/2 gallon. I always drink the first glass right away, so it ends up fitting :) You may want a bigger pitcher.

Good for kids and adults:-)

FROZEN MINT LEMONADE Serves 4
1/2 C fresh squeezed lemon juice
1/2 C sugar
1/3 C packed fresh mint leaves
2 C cold water
About 3 C ice cubes, cracked if large

Blend lemon juice, sugar and mint leaves in blender until leaves are finely chopped and sugar is dissolved. Add water and enough ice cubes to fill blender; blend until smooth. Serve immediately. Garnish each glass with mint sprig.

DONNA

This is the best margarita I've ever tasted ! My son-in-law Dick made these for my birthday in Canada one year . Missing from the pic is the slice of lime on the edge of the glass and the watermelon wedges. I could drink these by the liter !
They are sooo refreshing and not at all too sweet.

Watermelon Margarita

2 cups cubed, seedless watermelon, cut small
2 oz tequila
1 oz orange liqueur, such as Grand Marnier or Triple Sec
1/4 cup fresh-squeezed lime juice
4 lime and 4 watermelon wedges for garnishing

1. Freeze watermelon on a plastic wrap-lined plate until frozen solid
2. Place in a blender with the other ingredients and blend until smooth and light
3. Pour into a well-chilled glass, garnish with lime and watermelon wedges and serve immediately.

Source: Times Colonist Victoria Newspaper

SharonCb

I know this isn't very creative but my all time favourite summer drink is Southern Comfort and Orange Juice on the rocks...lots of SC.

You best be careful , they go down oh so good!

Keep the recipes coming - these sound so yummy. I've been on a carbonated yogurt drink kick lately, after having yogurt soda at a Persian restaurant. The plain is not for everyone, but flavored yogurts would probably be more palatable for you - in a blender, mix a couple heaping tablespoons of yogurt and about 6 oz of soda water. I've experimented w/ adding mint leaves, salt and different fruits. It's like a lighter lassi.

Give me a BIG old glass of ice tea with lemon please during the summertime and I'm a happy camper!

Any icey/slushy drink with fresh fruit is good to me too.

There are several that I like in the summer - it all depends on my mood!

1. Vermouth Cassis

1 oz Dry Vermouth
1 oz Creme de Cassis

Pour equal parts (about 2 oz total) over ice in a stemmed glass. Top with seltzer and garnish with a lemon twist.

2. Watermelon Coolers

4 oz vodka
3 oz Watermelon Pucker
1/2 cup watermelon pulp

Put everything over ice in a blender. Whiz it until it is slushy. Grnish with a watermelon wedge.

3. Dirty Pirate

2 oz Parrot Bay original rum
1 oz spiced rum (if you want him extra dirty, LOL)
3 oz pineapple juice

Ice a tall glass and add all ingredients. Stir or shake and serve with a pineapple wedge, maraschino cherry and lime slice.

If I am out with friends I usually order either vodka & sprite or vodka & tonic, but I bet you don't need a recipe for those!

Alexa

Here's one that I always have mixed up in a bucket in the freezer.

Frozen Chi-Chi's:

6 oz lemonade concentrate
6 oz limeade concentrate
1 can of coconut syrup
lg can of pineapple juice
1/5 vodka

mix all ingredients in lg. container (I use ice cream buckets). Freeze for at least 24 hours. Scoop into a glass and top off with 7-up or Sprite to make it slushy.

Lots of good, refreshing drinks here! Thanks!

Those Chi Chis look really good, I will definitely have to give them a try!

Mint lemonade? How good does that sound! YUM!

Know what I could really go for? A Banana Daiquiri! Like the ones they serve at Mountain Top on the island of St. Thomas. I googled for a recipe but I am not sure any of those I found are really similar. Anyone have a T&T recipe for banana daiquiris?

(Where is Ginger when ya need her? heehee!)

Linda

About the only summer drink I really enjoy outside of a good glass of wine is Sangria. And it is wine too.

This is my favourite.

Home Cookin Chapter: Recipes From Thibeault's Table

Spanish Sangria
===============
Source: Barbara Hansen's Mexican Cookery (1981)

1 bottle, dry full bodied red wine
(Make sure it is a decent wine. One good enough to drink on its own.)

2 tablespoon orange liqueur (Grand Marnier)
1/3 cup of simple syrup
1 lime thinly sliced
1 orange thinly sliced
1 lemon thinly sliced
Juice of one orange
1 cup club soda

Combined wine, syrup, brandy and orange juice and stir. Add sliced fruit and just before serving add the soda water.

Do not let the fruit slices sit in the Sangria for more than one hour before serving as the peels can cause the drink to be bitter.

Simple Syrup

1 cup sugar
1 cup water

Bring water and sugar to a boil and simmer until liquid is clear and the sugar has dissolved. Pour in to jar and refrigerate. Keep for 3 weeks.

I'm with Dixiedog, I like a big old glass of iced tea. No sugar, no lemon, no additives of any kind, just good cold iced tea.

I don't like beer and I don't like hard liquor. I'm still trying to like wine, LOL, but I've been known to have a glass of milk in the morning!

Annie

I just had a drink from Jamba Juice that should be really easy to make and is very tasty and refreshing. It was lemonade, strawberries, peaches, lime sherbet and ice. I'll have to figure out the actual proportions and post it, but it shouldn't be too tough to make.

Bri

My gals love the Sour Apple Martini,I love an ice cold Melon Ball YUM!!!

Plain iced tea is my first choice when it's hot outside and at certain times I really enjoy an old fashioned chocolate malt.

I had a drink the other night when we were out for dinner that I will be trying to make at home as soon as this cool weather warms up. It was mango, rum, a little sugar and ice, blended, poured into a tall glass, topped with sweetened strawberry puree....OMG good. and pretty too. This is the type of drink I could get into trouble with.

Nancy

Once the warm weather hits up here, I always have a huge jug of ice tea in the fridge. I buy different kinds of teas and mix up a batch every couple of days.

For our pool parties, my absolute favorite is a Caipirinha. So simple, and so delicious.

Caipirinha:

1 lime
2 ounces of cachaça
Sugar or simple syrup to taste
crushed ice

Cut the lime into pieces and place them in a glass. Sprinkle with the sugar or simple syrup and crush the pieces with a pestle. Fill glass with crushed ice. Add the cachaça and stir to mix.

these are soooo good and refreshing on a hot day! Watch out, though!

They're from Susan Branch's Summertime book. These are a beautiful light pink color and not too sweet - and the beer makes it kind of frothy. Strange combination but it works.

Skip and Go Naked
2/3 cup beer, cold
2/3 cup frozen pink lemonade concentrate
1/4 cup vodka

Fill a blender half way with ice. Pour in beer, lemonade, and vodka. Blend well and serve.

On a hot, humid day, I really enjoy a tall glass of raspberry iced tea with lots of ice cubes. I sit in my moss garden under the spruce tree. It's a cool place to sit...about 10' of head room but you have to duck under the spruce limbs to get inside...like a hidden room. Me and my iced tea. Very nice.

/tricia

stacy 3, I've completely forgotten about that drink. Yes, they are sooo good! We call that Hillybilly
Lemonaide around here. Another thing we used to do is take a glass ice tea jug, cut up 6 lemons, add 1 cup of sugar and a 1/5 of vodka. Fill remaining space with ice. Wrap it up in a towel and shake it until the towel sticks to the glass from the frost. Serve in a tall frosty glass.

Here in the CA Central Valley, summers are often hot, hot, hot. My husband and I both do fairly physical work for a living, and we don't like air conditioned air, preferring lots of fans and lots of liquids.

So, I have a couple of thin, high, 5 qt. containers with spigots that fit nicely into a small section of fridge shelf. We fill one with fairly strong decaf Iced tea and the other with lemonade Crystal light. We mix it half and half in our glasses and often go through a couple of quarts a day. It's great because you can mix it sweet (more Crystal Light, less tea) or not sweet (the other way around), and not horribly expensive.

Oops, I meant to say a couple of quarts each a day.

Now, as for adult bevvies, I've a really nice bed of mint, and juleps were most certainly invented for sipping in the garden swing or under the gazebo.

I discovered mojitos last summer. I haven't made them myself,so if any one has a recipe...mmm...

Sex on the Beach

1 1/2 oz vodka
1/2 oz peach schnapps
2 oz cranberry juice
2 oz orange juice

I know there are lots of different recipes for this, but I like this one.

and

Goombay Smash

1 oz Bacardi® light rum
1 oz coconut rum
2 oz pineapple juice
2 oz orange juice
1 dash grenadine syrup

I forgot this amazingly simple one

Simple Margarita

Tequila
Newman's Own Lime Juice
to taste

rim glasses with salt and serve on the rocks

Donna, your lemonade recipe is similar to mine, except that mine is plain (i.e., no mint). A lot of people (including the authors of Joy of Cooking) don't realize that it is much easier to dissolve the sugar with the lemon juice. It has a very different flavor when mixed this way - it seems to have a mellowing effect on the juice and make it less acidic. Anyway, sugar dissolves much more readily in lemon juice than it does in water. I used to make the sugar syrup in JOC but stopped after I discovered the other method.

I always seem to have a lot of oranges on my tree, and so I mix fresh orange juice with ice and a bit of Cointreau or Grand Marnier (but only a tablespoon or so per glass). It adds a little bit of extra sweetness to the juice.

I like to mix cranberry juice with either ginger ale or grapefruit soda. Not sure if there is a name for it, but if I use grapefruit soda, I tend to use cranberry concentrate (unsweetened) with a bit of equal, lots of ice, and some vodka. My other favorite cocktail is Bloody Caesar, which I first had in North Vancouver: vodka, Clamato juice, dash of Worcestershire, and dash of hot sauce, often served with a celery stick swizzle.

When I had a passion vine, I would juice the passion fruit (about 20 of them for one drink) and add water plus sweetener. It made a fantastically fragrant drink - it was like drinking passion flowers. I also like to save hibiscus flowers from the bushes in my yard, dry them, and make tea. It is so superior to the hibiscus tea from the store, and is very good cold.

Lars

oh I am so saving this thread!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

thanks for starting it Linda.

Does anyone have a recipe so I can make my own frozen concentrates? I can't buy them over here and I would love to have them in the freezer for the kids to make up.
Or maybe one for the fridge?
Lisa

My favorite summer-time drink out by the pool is a variation of the same thing.

If it's too early for a alcoholic drinkie it's lemonade made with sparkling water (carbonated lemonade).

In the afternoon when it's time for a real drinkie, I add Grey Goose to my carbonated lemonade.

Hey Stacy, in the recipe you posted with the beer - can you taste the beer in that drink?

Nope. you really don't. It somehow just kind of froths it up and cuts the sweetness of the lemonade...you really should try them!

Alrightie then! I'll try it!! Gotta go copy and paste some of these recipes now.

How do you save a thread?

This one's super easy and really yummy:

Austin Margaritas

1 12-oz can frozen limeade
1 12-oz can Sprite
1 12-oz can tequila (or maybe a little less to taste)
1 12-oz bottle Corona beer.

Use the empty limeade can to measure other ingredients. Mix all ingredients together in a pitcher, serve on the rocks.

Other than that, I like a nice pitcher of flavored iced tea, sweetened just a smidgen.

Shaun, I click on "Page" and select "save as" then save it under the right heading with my recipes...

Thanks Stacy it worked!

Thanks Stacy, it worked!

Here is one of my own invention. It is very refreshing, but the colour is not attractive:

Shake together equal measures of cranberry juice and orange juice with some ice (for one person, about 50 ml of each plus a couple of ice cubes). Pour into highball glasses until they are 1/2 to 2/3 full and top with Sprite or 7up (I use Sprite Zero). For alcoholic version, add vodka.

Stacy....we call that drink "Strip and go naked"...not "skip! LOL!
And my recipie calls for a 10 oz can of frozen lemonade, that same 10 oz can filled with beer, fill it again with vodka...or rum, and fill it again with lemon lime soda.
Strip and go naked...for sure!!

I'm glad to find this post, there are lots of yummy drinks that I plan to try. I'm adding my infamous Mojito recipe. I've been making these for the past couple summers and finally made one where I measured the ingredients. These are good beyond words!

Mojitos

4 sugar cubes
4-6 mint leaves
2-3 slices lime
½ ounce fresh lime juice
½ ounce triple sec
1-1/2 oz rum
Soda water

Muddle sugar cubes, mint leaves, lime slices. Add lime juice, triple sec, rum and sodaÂstir, then add 5 or 6 cubes of ice (much easier to stir before the ice is added). This fills an old fashion glass perfectly. They are pretty labor intensive, especially if you making them for several people. Enjoy!

Oh, I love Mojitos! I bought a spearmint plant Monday because my mint didn't make it through the winter for some reason. Can't wait to make some!

Linda

I like white sangria with a nice rack of BBQ ribs!

Sangria Blanca
3 1/2 C dry white wine, chilled (1 bottle)
I like a pinot grigio...but whatever!
1/2 C Triple Sec
1/4 C sugar
ice cubes
1 10 oz. bottle club soida, chilled [I use Ginger Ale]
1 orange, sliced
1 lemon, sliced
2 limes, cut into wedges
Combine wine, Triple Sec and sugar until well
blended in a glass pitcher. When ready to
serve, stir in ice and club soda. Add fruit
and serve.

Oh, I almost forgot about my Vanilla Margaritas! Those of you that like Margaritas really have to try this, the vanilla makes them so smooth! (I have to admit, I have snuck into this before the required 2 months and it's still awesome!)

Vanilla Margaritas

1 part good quality tequila
1 part grand marnier
1 part triple sec
1 vanilla bean

Combine all ingredients in a bottle or jar with cover. Let sit for at least 2 months.

When ready, mix with your favorite margarita mix and enjoy!

Linda

Pomegrante Margarita
2 oz. tequila
splash cointreau
splash of lime juice
splash of pomegrante liquer
2 oz sour mix
Lime for garnish
Mix 2 oz of tequila with splash of cointreau lime juice and promegrante liquer.
top off with 2 oz of sour mix
squeeze in som e fresh lime juice and shake over ice
serve over ice in a salt rimmed glass
garnish with lime

wow this is gonna be tippy summer!

This drink is made in India for a particular festival. You can drink this in summer. It really keeps you fresh.

100g Jaggery
2-3 Cardomam
2 cups of water

Mix Jaggery with water and boil at 180degrees for 15 mts. Add cardomam whole or cardomaom powder. Refregirate it for 2hrs and then its feast time. Itwill be very sweet so if u r a person who loves sweets this drink is for you.

Here is a link that might be useful: Recipes

I had to look up jaggery as I'd never heard of it. Seems to be unrefined sugar? Can one substitute brown sugar? Might not have the minerals, etc, but would it be too sweet??

I've bookmarked your blog as I love Indian food (too bad the kids don't!) and our favorite local Indian restaurant has been replaced by yet another Thai rest....

My kids love these..

Slurpees

2 cups Club Soda Cold
1/2 cup Sugar
1/4 teaspoon Unsweetened Cherry Kool-Aid Mix [I use any flavor]
1/2 teaspoon Cherry Extract Can Use Marichino Cherry juice [optional]
2 1/2 cups Crushed Ice

Instructions
1. Pour 1 cup of the club soda into a blender. Add the sugar, Kool-Aid mix, and cherry extract. Blend this until all of the sugar is dissolved.

2. Add the crushed ice and blend on high speed until the drink is a slushy, smooth consistency, with no remaining chunks of ice.

3. Add the remaining club soda and blend briefly until mixed. You may have to stop the blender and use a long spoon to stir up the contents.

4. If necessary, put the blender into your freezer for 1/2-hour. This will help thicken it up. After 1/2-hour remove blender from freezer and, again, blend briefly to mix. (http://www.topsecretrecipes.com)

Makes one 32-ounce drink (or two 16-ouncers).

I use the KoolAid Invisible [no coloring] and add a drop of food coloring just to tint it, otherwise that stuff *stains* [especially synthetic deck material].

Here's my version of Mojitos. It simplifies the process so you can enjoy them anytime. I don't really have quantities since I measure by eye!

Anytime Mojitos

Light Rum 750 ml
Fresh Lime Juice (about 1/3-1/2 cup)
Mint Leaves (2 cups or so)
Superfine Sugar
Lime Soda Water
Mint sprigs or lime zest curl for garnish (optional)

In a pitcher, add mint and lime juice to rum, mash and marinate in refrigerator at least 4 hours preferably overnight. Strain rum through fine sieve or cheese cloth. Fill shaker with ice, add a shot of rum, ½ tsp. or so of super fine sugar and shake till chilled. Pour mixture into glass and top with a splash lime soda water. (Or you could add the sugar during the marinating process, skip this step and just fill a glass with ice, add the rum and top with lime soda water.) Garnish with a mint sprig or lime zest.