Limonana (Lemonana) is a delicious and refreshing Israeli mint lemonade that’s popular in the Mediterranean and Middle East.
What started out as a fake ad campaign, turned into a popular Israeli drink!
This sweet-tart, zesty drink is an easy and quick to make recipe with only 3 ingredients plus water.
A great beverage for picnics, BBQs, and events!
And it’s the ultimate thirst-quencher!
Israel has some brilliant minds when it comes to ads. One example is that of “Limonana.”
In the early 1990s, an Israeli advertising agency wanted to prove that bus ads worked.
So, they created a fake campaign for a “new” bottled drink called Limonana and plastered it on the sides of buses.
And the “fake” ad campaign was so successful that people actually started going into stores asking for it.
After that restaurants and juice companies actually started making it for real to meet the demand.
And so mint lemonade became a popular drink in Israel.
(Note that nana—or na’ana—means mint in Hebrew and Arabic).
And lemons and mint both have nutritional value!
A little about Israeli cuisine overall
Some people complain when food from one country is attributed to another country.
However, national cuisine in itself is often a mingling of food from a variety of cultures, often due to a change of ruling countries and a shifting of borders.
Turkish cuisine, for example, goes back to the Ottoman Empire and was a combination of several cultures under Ottoman rule.
When people move from country to country, they will take their cultures with them, and their descendants may adapt their traditional cuisine with that of their new home.
Chinese food in US restaurants is quite often not really authentic Chinese but Cinese-American.
Americans have created a whole variety of types and styles of pizza, and pineapple pizza was apparently created in Canada by a Greek immigrant. Yet, everyone still calls them all “pizza,” which originated in Italy.
Spaghetti is thought to be an Italian food, but many historians believe that it was brought back to Italy from China by Marco Polo.
Apparently, battered fried fish was from the Portuguese Jewish community as a Sabbath food and ended up in England via Holland during the Spanish Inquisition, yet everyone attributes the food to the British.
…and don’t get me started on Hummus.
When one lives in a melting pot, such as the US or Israel, it is just unrealistic to expect that food from a particular culture won’t mingle with that of other cultures.
“Israeli cuisine” is mostly Middle Eastern (as opposed to Eastern European) food that was brought to Israel by Jews when they fled or were expelled from Muslim countries and moved to Israel mostly after the declaration of the State of Israel (collectively known as Mizrahi Jews).
Recipes were passed from generation to generation, and although decades have passed, the foods are still known by the culture they came from, and everyone seems to have their own way of making them.
That said, there are many variations of pretty much any “Israeli” recipe because of background, custom, or even just taste. When choosing a recipe, one has to know what actually constitutes a main ingredient—what makes the dish what it is—and what is left up to individual taste.
I personally find it very arrogant and quite irritating when a blogger (not naming names) will put “authentic” in the title of an “Israeli” recipe, as if all the rest of the variations are mere imitations. What’s worse is when that blogger makes the recipe with her own twist and then calls it authentic!
Adding more or less of a spice or adding a spice that is not in the recipe does not make it less authentic, but calling it “authentic” and then adding unnecessary extra ingredients above and beyond what needs to be there is misleading.
For example, “authentic” Israeli salad (what Israelis call Israeli salad) is diced tomatoes and cucumbers. Sometimes, they will add some oil, salt, and pepper, but THAT’S IT. Anything else does not have to be there, but if you leave out the cucumbers or the tomatoes, you no longer have an “Israeli salad.”
However, Limonana is simply lemonade with mint—you choose how tart, sweet, or minty you want it!
Love lemon? Try Sweet Lemonade!
Limonana (Lemonana)
Delicious and refreshing, sweet-tart mint lemonade. Easy and quick to make with only 3 ingredients and water!
Ingredients
- 3/4 cup lemon juice
- 3/4 cup white granulated sugar
- leaves from 1-2 sprigs of mint (depending on how minty you'd like it to be)
- 6 cups water (or more for a milder taste).
Instructions
- Pour lemon juice into a pitcher.
- Add water and sugar and mint leaves (leave some for garnish, if desired).
- Mix well.
- Remove the mint or leave it in for a stronger taste.
- Chill until cold.
Nutrition Information:
Yield:
6Serving Size:
1Amount Per Serving: Calories: 127Sodium: 18mgCarbohydrates: 33gFiber: 0gSugar: 32gProtein: 0g