Saints Preserve Us

And so as threatened on Facebook, what happens to the good fruit.

The normal thing was for Mom and Dad to eat them of course. Fruit in bowls. Tomatoes on hamburgers, BLTs, with green beans, roasted in the oven, or used in spaghetti sauce.

But Dad can't leave thing simple.

He made peach ice cream. He may have made apricot ice cream too, I'm not sure.

Then there was the attempt at making brandy. Now back in the 70s wine was really starting to become big. And my parents were expanding their palettes. One of Dad's creations was a wine punch which is very similar to a sangria. Now when you make this you use jug wine, and we used what Mr. Welles hawked, so after the parties were over, we had big green empty wine jugs.

I don't know the recipe for making these brandies, but I'm sure it involved a little yeast and maybe even some other brandy to start. But the main ingredient was fruit. and they had lots of peaches and plums to experiment with. Now the wine jugs had screw tops, and that kept them pretty much air tight. And dad had two of the jugs on his work bench in the garage.

The liquid was cloudy with pulp and the yeast, and we just let them ferment.

Again, I don't remember if we heard the mini-explosion, but I do remember going out into the garage and things being sticky, and there being a lot of broken glass. Now only one bottle was destroyed, and Dad took care of ti for a long time.

He or Mom will have to comment on if any of it still survives. I know he used to strain it once a year, and give out little tastes.