Beat the Heat: DIY Passion Tea Lemonade

I have another confession to make: I have a Starbucks issue, and mostly everybody knows. Every birthday and Christmas, I get roughly 7 Starbucks gift cards, and like clockwork, I burn through them each semester. They really didn't do me any favors by starting to charge for soy milk. It's like, excuse me, Starbucks, do you know who I am? I have a gold card.

I battle the soy milk conundrum by drowning myself in passion tea/green tea lemonades. I'm not too enthused about spending $5 on a glorified Arnold Palmer, however. Hence why I was so excited to find the Starbucks Tazo Iced Tea bags on sale at Target near the tail end of last summer. I promptly forgot about them, then rediscovered them while digging through my basement in a heat exhaustion-induced haze on this 90 degree afternoon. I broke out my juicer and I got to work, and let me tell you: this is so much better than the Starbucks lemonade-out-of-a-carton version. I promise.

PREP TIME
15-20 minutes (or however long it takes you to juice 7 lemons...)

MAKES:
6 big-ish glasses

INGREDIENTS:
 1 1/2 cups lemon juice (about 5-7 lemons)
8 cups water
1 Tazo passion tea bag
Zest of 2 lemons
Rind of 1 lemon
1 1/2 cups sugar*
Strawberries for garnish (optional)

DIRECTIONS:
1. Bring 4 cups of water to a boil. Remove from heat and add lemon zest and rind, tea bag, and sugar. (The box says to let the tea steep for 5 minutes, but I probably left mine in there for 15)
2. Juice your lemons until you have 1 1/2 cups, then strain out seeds and pulpy gunk
3. Strain out the zest and rind from your tea 3. Combine lemon juice and tea in a large pitcher and add 4 cups of cold water. I added a few sliced strawberries at this point, but that's optional
4. Refrigerate for at least 1 hour, then serve over ice. Garnish with a strawberry if you'd like.

*I put 1 cup of sugar in mine and it turned out a little too sour for my liking, so I added a few squirts of agave nectar. If you like yours as sweet as Starbucks makes it, I would advise putting at least 1 1/2 cups in there, maybe 2.

This is the perfect summer drink to cool down with, and it tastes even better knowing you didn't pay a whole bunch of money for a cup of ice with a splash of tea and lemonade in it. With the way the forecast is looking this weekend, I may be making another batch...or two.