Port Potager

Over the weekend we celebrated Kirk's birthday by cracking open the Cherry Bounce  during a game night with friends. This is the first time we've served it, and we were playing it pretty safe by mixing it instead of drinking it straight. After all, it's pure rum with a cherry infusion and a lot of sugar. Sure, George Washington drank it straight, but he was pretty bad-ass. We still wanted to be able to play party games competitively. It turns out that the Cherry Bounce didn't pack much of a punch when mixed, so it might  not be so potent as we feared. It really is delicious straight, and I think that a small cordial glass à la Colonial times would be quite lovely on a cold, winter night. But for the first time out, we liked it a lot mixed with Coca-Cola and a twist of lime. You know, a rum and Cherry Coke. I love  Cherry Coke, so this drink was a winner. We're calling this play on the Cuba Libre  a Cereza Libre ( cereza is Spanish for cherry). Cere...

Back in August we gathered chokecherries and used them to infuse some local rum to make old fashioned cordial called Cherry Bounce. Now that it's December and the cherries have been soaking away in alcohol for the last four months, the Cherry Bounce should be ready. Here's what it looked like when I brought it up from the basement, where it had been sitting on a cool, dark shelf:  It's hard to tell in this photo, but the liquid is now a totally dark black-purple — the color of black raspberry juice, but barely translucent at all. I set up the bowl with the handle from the stand mixer with a mesh strainer on top to catch all the little chokecherries: I was a little surprised at how dark the liquid was when I poured out the first jar. The dregs were even a little thick looking. The chokecherries now look soft, and their skins are no longer shiny: I tasted a chokecherry first, and they are definitely spent: totally tasteless, and certainly nowhere nea...

Yesterday I started making Cherry Bounce by soaking our foraged chokecherries in water overnight. Now that they are done soaking, it's time to finish mixing up our ingredients for this colonial-era cordial. We're ready to move on. Step three: Drain the chokecherries, reserving 1 cup of the soaking liquid: As you can see, what was plain water yesterday is now a lovely cherry red color. It doesn't taste like much of anything yet, but it sure is pretty. Step four: Add the reserved liquid plus 2 cups of sugar to the chokecherries: Because we are in the height of pickling season, I didn't have an available container large enough for a quart of chokecherries plus a quart of rum and all that sugar. Instead, I used four wide-mouth, quart-sized mason jars, which meant I had to further divide down the recipe to have tiny proportions of the ingredients. This is a really easy way to do it, though, and is perfect if you only have a small amount of fruit or ju...

Do you have one of these in or near your yard? If you have lots of little purple berries getting squished underfoot on your sidewalk or driveway, or are hearing lots of birds squabbling in the early morning, look up. You might notice some of these:  This is a chokecherry tree, a native cherry tree with small, tart fruit. (Tart is probably an understatement,  or at least is only accurate when they are very ripe, as the ones in the picture are. ) Some people call them pin cherries or bird cherries.  These trees are kind of weedy, and we have several. One is a bushy monster near the fire hydrant out front, and the several more are taller and more obviously tree-like, but are technically on the neighbor's property along the line our driveways share. But lots of the long, willowy branches hang over the fence onto our side of the driveway, and that's good news for us, since you can use these guys to make a traditional colonial cordial called Cherry Bounce. ...