As I mentioned on Monday, we’re doing a health food cleanse right now, which involves lots of all-natural foods (i.e. no chemicals, preservatives), fresh juices and oodles of water. The last item on that list is the toughest for me. I wish more than anything I was one of those people who happily drank a gallon of water a day, but I’m not. Give me a gallon worth of La Croix though, and I’d down it quickly.
In order to drink lots of water, I typically flavor it with fruit. While we were in St. Petersburg in May, we drank tons of fruit-infused lemonades (they were on all the cool restaurant’s menus!) – see a photo here. I imagine there was quite a bit of sugar in the drinks, but I decided there didn’t need to be, as fruit is so sweet naturally.
On Monday, I played around with ingredients to try to create the perfect healthy pineapple basil lemonade (our favorite combination from Russia). After a little experimenting, I did it! It may sound weird to have lemons, pineapple and basil together in a drink, but trust me on this one.
Since making it on Monday afternoon, we have drank about six pitchers of this lemonade (not exaggerating!).
Ingredients (based on 3.5 liter pitcher)
- 2-3 cups of fresh, diced pineapple
- Approximately 15 leaves of basil (the more the merrier, in my opinion)
- 2 teaspoons of Truvia (sugar or another natural sweetener work too!)
- 3 tablespoons of pure lemon juice
- 2-3 cups of ice
- Water (add last and fill to top of pitcher)
Directions
- Dice pineapple into one-inch cubes and put half into the pitcher and the other half into a tupperware container or sealed bowl
- Add Truvia and lemon juice (fresh or from a concentrate bottle) to the pitcher
- Add whole basil leaves on top of the pineapple
- Optional step: Using a wooden spoon, gently muddle the basil and pineapple together against the side of the pitcher. Sasha loves this, but I prefer to have whole leaves and cubes!
- Add ice cubes (our ice machine makes small cubes, but crushed may be best vs. massive cubes from a refrigerator)
- Fill the pitcher with water and stir with a big spoon
- Refrigerate for at least 30 minutes before drinking, as the flavors from the basil and pineapple need to soak into the water! Then enjoy.
Make sure to leave me a comment if you try this and love it!
5 Comments
I think Ailee has consumed no less than 9 gallons of this Pineapple-Basil-Lemonade in the last 3 days!
I love fruit water, this looks delicious! I need to try it asap, thanks for sharing!
This water looks SO good. I’ve never tried basil in a drink before, but will definitely buy the ingredients when I go to the grocery store next. Thank you for sharing!
So glad you shared this, looks so good and your photos are incredible. Can’t wait to try it and share how it turned out. I will be doing that for sure, hope you try my kiwi mint one too! XO
YASSSSS! Basil is my spirit animal (wait, so is mint.) Very excited to get home from our trip and make this. What happens if you don’t use sugar, is it yuck? I’m serious, Martha best watch her back, Ailee is creepin’.
Love from TLV, Jenny Journey xoxoxox