The approach of chilly weather may leave many craving warm libations, but this Vodka Rosemary Lemonade Fizz is truly a drink for all seasons. The bloggers of the Bitten Word tackled this Gourmet recipe, which eschews the usual infusion to instead create a simple syrup with sugar, rosemary and lemon juice subbing for water. The syrup can keep for weeks in the fridge and need only be topped with vodka and a dash of club soda to be served.

Rosemary adds a nice mouthfeel and complexity to the crisp, refreshing drink, but almost any herb will serve well in simple syrup, from lavender to Thai basil. Spill your simple syrup recipes or ideas in the comments.

Become a member of the Slashfood Flickr pool to get a shot at having your photos featured in Feast Your Eyes.

We puckered our way through 70 cartons, bottles, and cans in search of the best store-bought brand of lemonade. Read on for results.

Photo: The Skinny Chef

Lemonade fits the bill as a refreshing summertime drink while you're cooling at the pool, finishing lawn work, or just need a break. I love the way pink lemonade looks, but I don't want the unnecessary red food coloring or high fructose corn syrup that can be found in most commercial brands.

Blending in cherries makes your lemonade naturally flavorful, pretty and pink. I just bought a huge bag of the Bing variety, recalling the scene from 'The Witches of Eastwick' wherein Cher and friends are gobbling down fresh cherries while Jack Nicholson -- playing the Devil -- has to spit out the pits.

I don't mind them so much; they come out easily with a paring knife or an inexpensive cherry pitter.

Get Jennifer's Cherry Crush Lemonade recipe and learn about cherries' health benefits after the jump.

I'm stingy with my smoke.

Not in a "don't bogart that can, man" way. Just that if I'm going to go to all the trouble of stoking a hardwood lump charcoal fire, obsessively monitoring its low-'n-slow-ness for a goodly chunk of the day, feeding its greedy gut with beer-soaked mesquite and hickory chunks at half-hour intervals all for the sake of an albeit fabulous brisket or pork shoulder, I'm gonna want a bit more return on the investment.

Here's where foil pans of salt, cherries and lemons come in.

Of course, I'm not talking about the ways you try to keep cool in general, such as cranking the AC, jumping into a pool, or going to the beach. I'm talking about liquid refreshment.

There are many schools of thought on this. My mom used to drink hot coffee in June, July, and August, going by the old theory that drinking hot liquids in hot months actually cools you down. I myself like iced tea and ice cold water during the summer, with some diet soda and icy Ocean Spray Light Ruby Red here and there too. Others seem to like beer and cocktails, though I really doubt their effectiveness (beyond the initial hit of cold liquid going down).

After the jump, give us your liquid solutions for the summer. Besides the drinks above, I'm thinking about asking the owner of the liquor store down the street if I can live in his giant walk in fridge for the summer..

There are some kitchen tasks we all dread -- cutting onions, pulling out the insides of a chicken, and for many of us, squeezing lemons and limes. Here are some tips for getting the most out of your lemons, and for getting most of your lemon juice into your bowl, not on your fingers.

It goes without saying that you shouldn't drink and drive. And I would add that you certainly shouldn't drink and drive 200 miles per hour.

This Sunday at 1pm marks the start of the Indianapolis 500 race. And to go along with the popular sporting event is a series of cocktails. More precisely, official "Victory Cocktails," including Pit Lane Lemonade and the Winner's Choice Cocktail. After the jump is the recipe for the latter, created by Curtis Parker of the Mudsocks Bar & Grille in Noblesville, IN.

The Winner's Choice Cocktail actually sounds better to me (I like gin, not vodka), but I didn't, um, have a picture of it.

• Summer is salad time, including salads with green beans.
• When you order fish in a restaurant, does it come with bones or without?
• An interview with Darra Goldstein, author of Baking Boot Camp: Five Days of Basic Training at the Culinary Institute of America.
• What's the best cottage cheese you can buy at the supermarket?
• You've heard of the Slow Food trend? How about the Slow Sip?
• This week's recipes: Eggplant Gazpacho, Chicken Salad, Poor Man's Caviar, Ham and Cheddar Scones, Pecan Butter Ball Cookies, Angel Food Summer Pudding, and Lemonade.

Well, there's two words I never thought I'd see in the same name of a drink, "hickory" and "lemonade."

This drink over at AOL Food seems to combine the best of a summer barbecue and the refreshing offerings at a kid's lemonade stand! Not sure how easy it is to get smoked cherries where you are (I never heard of them before this, except when describing wine), but it's a main ingredient. Recipe after the jump.

Summer doesn't officially begin for another month, but we all know it's here already. The days are getting warmer (if not hotter, like today in the Boston area) and it's Memorial Day weekend, which is the real start of summer for most people.

So how about some lemonade? Like Kat Kinsman, most of the people I knew growing up used packaged mixes when making lemonade, but she gives a good recipe for real lemonade over at AOL Food. The full recipe after the jump.

This past summer I tried Simply Lemonade and Simply Limeade, two new products from the Simply Orange Juice Company. I usually make my lemonades and limeades from scratch, but when I saw these I gave them a chance and was quite surprised. They tasted almost like I had made them myself, chock full of zesty and tangy citrus flavor and very refreshing.

Now December isn't the time of year I would normally talk about lemon and limeade but these make great mixers for either an adult or children's holiday punch. With their tart, real citrus flavor they bring some depth to what would normally be a boring punch. I used a mix of the two with red wine and splash of dark rum and I very suddenly became quite festive. The punch goes great with any type of celebration: winter, spring, summer, or fall.

If you have ever seen a Hot Dog on A Stick, the first thing that you'll note is the wacky uniforms that their employees wear. If you venture closer, you'll see that their menu is simple and true to their name, with corndogs, french fries and lemonade. The concept is clearly to provide fair favorites in non-fair locations, such as malls. A corndog is a corndog, but their cherry lemonade is maddeningly addictive. Unfortunately a 12-oz. size packs in 160 calories, and people tend to order the larger 24-oz. and 32-oz. (410 calories) sizes to wash down their salty snacks.

The company fairly recently introduced sugar free lemonade to their stores, but it's just not the same. After all, it doesn't deliver that cherry punch. If you want a low-calorie alternative to the cherry version, try the Minute Maid Light Cherry Limeade, which manages to deliver that cherry taste with only 10 calories in a 12-ounce serving. The difference between lime and lemon flavors, especially in drinks that have additional levels of flavor, is minimal. And the best part is that you can pick up a 12-pack at the market for much less than you would spend at the restaurant itself.

Celebrities are touting the maple syrup diet, which is a type of detox diet that is also known as the Master Cleanse diet, or the lemonade diet. Essentially, you drink a mixture of water, maple syrup, lemon juice and cayenne pepper (a very small amount) for about 10 days. Without getting into the sticky issue of whether or not you are really cleansing your body, if you even need to, the diet is a way to drop a few pounds quickly, for better or worse. It works because you take in relatively few calories and a lot of liquids.

All in all, it seems to result in a relatively quick weight loss of a few pounds, but certainly neither a long term solution nor a substitute for a more traditionally healthy diet. It is great for the sales of maple syrup, though, since some stores are reporting that their sales have more than doubled in the past few months.

One woman's account of her time on the diet can be read here if you're interested in getting the daily details of the "cleanse."

Thinking about Lemonade this morning put me in the mood for something refreshing and the Pink Lemonade from Simply Recipes sounds like just the thing. Elise's recipe is extra-pink and uses cranberry juice to give it its distinctive coloring, unlike commercial versions which use food colorings or concentrated natural colors to create pinkness. The natural tartness of the cranberry juice also helps it to blend well with the lemon flavor, creating a smooth and balanced drink. Sure - it's a tiny bit girly looking, but who could turn down a glass of lemonade, knowing that it was homemade? If you can't use plain sugar for any reason, you could try sweetening the juice with Splenda, too.

Lemonade may just be one of the most refreshing summertime drinks you can have, even taking into account the amount of sugar that is usually in it. When we learn to make it, it is a one-note drink with lemons, sugar, water and ice. Enjoyable, but simple. But the drink has become more and more artificial, to the point where restaurants now serve Crystal Light and flat-sodas masquerading as what was once a juice drink.

Lemonade will help to revive the tradition of the homemade drink. It guides you to turn this classic into something more complex than the version you learned as a child, adding fruits and herbs, including rhubarb, spearmint, ginger and mangoes. Vanilla Bean Lemonade delivers a smooth, subtle flavor and the Strawberry Rhubarb is a treat. The book includes 50 recipes, each of which will make you forget the watery mix at the soda fountain that calls itself lemonade.