If You Don't Have a Lemon, Make Lemonade!

truelemon01

A little over two years ago in this message, I extolled the virtues of True Lemon Original Lemonade mix and said I hoped they'd someday come out with an orange drink. They have. Actually, it's orange mango but that's close enough.

This company called True Lemon started out to just market crystallized lemon which one could add to one's tea or drinking water but when it succeeded, they began to diversify with True Lime, then True Orange and True Grapefruit and they now have such an extensive line of fruity products that they seem to be slowly changing the name of the firm to True Citrus. I am most interested in their drink mixes, which are a bit different from their crystal flavoring powders.

Simple rule: If it doesn't say "DRINK MIX" on the box, it's not a drink mix. It's crystallized fruit extract that you can add to water or anything else. If you want a glass of water with a hint of lemon, you add the crystallized version they call True Lemon. If you want something that tastes like a glass of lemonade, you want their drink mix. In it simplest application, you buy these little envelopes of powder and you add one to a chilled 500ml bottle of water and turn it into a refreshing drink.

They now have five drink mixes, all of which are sweetened with a tiny bit of sugar but mainly with Stevia. They are Lemonade, Raspberry Lemonade, Peach Lemonade, Mango Orange Drink and Black Cherry Limeade. The two I'm stocking in my cupboard are the plain Lemonade and the Mango Orange.

The latter is a tad sweeter than I would like but since I have no sweet tooth, it's probably just right for most people. The oddest thing about it is that they stress this natural flavoring — Crystallized Orange (Citric Acid, Malic Acid, Orange Oil, Orange Juice, Ascorbic Acid), Natural Mango Flavor, etc. — and then they add Beta-Carotene for color and it makes it a very unnatural shade of orange.

I wish they sold a sampler pack so you could just get one or two of each flavor but what this link offers is a box of each of the five flavors, ten little envelopes to a box, for $20.00. There are other packages of True Lemon/Citrus products that do include a sampler pack of one of each drink and you might want to browse Amazon to find one of them. Worth checking out, I say.