Limoncello

What better way to start a new blog than with a recipe for something I absolutely love to drink and love to make. Limoncello--the drink of the gods!

1 750 ml bottle of decent grain alcohol
3 750 ml bottles of inexpensive vodka
40-50 nice lemons
4 C sugar
4 C water (use bottled if you don't have good tasting water)
1 5 liter jar with a well fitting lid

Soak your lemons in hot water for about 5-10 minutes. It will help get the wax off them. Dry them and then carefully peel them with a new veggie peeler. You don't want to get any of the white bit from the inside on the peel if possible. Since it's pretty impossible to not get any, just get as little as you can. Put all the peels in your big clean jar and dump in the booze. Give it a good stir, close it up and put it in a cool, dark place for the next 40 days. During that time, give it a good sloosh every once in a while just to stir the peels up a bit.
At the end of the 40 days, strain the peels out. I get coffee filters just barely damp with water when I strain it because I don't want to waste the yellow lusciousness on a coffee filter. It take some time and more than a few filters. I've got 2 jars and just strain it from one into the other.
While you're straining it, measure out the sugar and water and bring it to a boil. Don't let it keep boiling, just to a boil. If you don't do that, the sugar will crystallize out into the limoncello. Not a good thing. Let the sugar water (simple syrup) cool to room temp and mix it in with the lovely yellow booze. Now close it back up and stash it back in that cool place for at least 2 weeks and up to another 40 days.
I save Sangria bottles with that little swingy hinge lid and then just bottle it up into those. You can buy bottles too if you need. Make some cute labels and you're set. I always keep a bottle in the freezer. Keep a couple of small glasses in there too.
After dinner, take the bottle out of the freezer and my chilled glasses and pour about an ounce. It needs to be absolutely chilled. Sip it and enjoy your lemony goodness. Be sure you start your next batch before you're close to running out because you really won't want to be without it.
All that lemon juice that you'll get from those 40 or 50 lemons gets put to good use too. I freeze it in ice cube trays and then use it in lemon martinis or vodka lemonades in the summer. Yummm, yummm, yum.