Lemonade gives license to creativity (1/4ページ)

Homemade lemonade is an iconic summer drink, but some folks don't like its squeeze on their time.

But Fred Thompson, whose many cookbooks include "Lemonade: 50 Cool Recipes for Classic, Flavored, and Hard Lemonades and Sparklers" (The Harvard Common Press, 2002, $12.95), says it's worth the effort.

"It'll out-taste anything on the market," he says.

Refrigerated lemonades that you buy in the grocery store have come a long way in the past few years, he says, but you don't get the oils from the rind. "To me, that's just sort of critical," Thompson says in an interview from Raleigh, N.C.

The rind helps the flavor intensify, he says. "It's not a pucker intensification. It's a very pleasant intensification."

Kathy Miller of West Melbourne, Fla., uses rinds when she makes lemonade, following the recipe her sister Nancy Bailey got in 1959 from a farmer's wife in Illinois.