Adventures in plums

[oceansedge]

Essentially we have 2 kinds in the house. Larger elongated purple plums bought from the local grocery store, but locally grown, they're quite sweet and, for the most part, free stone. And smaller, more like very large grapes, purple plums grown by the neighbour the flesh is yellower, and they're quite tart and they're cling stone. For the moment we

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[acelightning]

There's a Japanese drink, probably considered a form of "plum brandy", that you can easily make at home. Get a large jar with a tight-fitting lid, and some Everclear or high-proof vodka, and maybe some sugar. Fill the jar loosely with washed plums (probably some of each kind), cut in half. Add sugar if necessary. Fill it up with the alcohol, cover tightly, and store in a cool dark place for at least four to six weeks. Gently shake the jar every few days. When the fruit begins to look white, and the liquid becomes colored, taste it :-)

[oceansedge]

my mother used to always do something similar...

brandied peaches in an old stone crock.... she'd just keep it going for years a bit more brandy and bit more peaches, always feeding the crock - and we'd have lovely brandied peaches for topping things

Same thing with what she called 'Tutti-Frutti' .. whatever fruit was on hand, blueberries, peaches, plums, nectaries, raspberries, blackberries - whatever was fresh and handy... and into a crock it would go with some high octane vodka... that crock lived on the top of the cupboard my entire childhood

[acelightning]

My mother used to make fruitcake every year for Christmas. She'd keep a big ceramic crock about half-full of all sorts of candied and dried fruits, soaking in a mixture of rum, brandy, and sherry, along with some whiskey and all sorts of fruit and nut liqueurs. She'd bake the fruitcakes in October, then glaze them with a syrup heavily laced with more booze, and keep them in the fridge, giving them another coat of syrup every so often. She'd also decorate them with pineapple rings, maraschino cherries, pecans, blanched almonds, and anything else that made a nice seasonal decoration. The crock full of drunken fruit was like a classic stock-pot, never emptied but always replenished - I daresay there might have been stuff in there from twenty years before. My dad tried to make fruitcake, three years after my mom died, using the fruit in the crock... and it was pretty good! (Really, the only part that wasn't the best was the cake batter itself - the only thing he really knew how to bake was bread.)