One definition of patience...

Involves having to wait 3 months to dive back in to one of these jars:

 

No, I haven't all the sudden come down with the canning bug(although, one of these years, we still start canning.  I'm sure it be the same month I start Re-Loading.).  The only thing close to aproper term I have found for what is inside those jars is 'rumtopf'.  Traditionally, 'rumtopf' is a German recipe in which you combine fresh, ripe strawberries with rum and sugar in a crock.  As other fruits ripen, you add them in layers, keeping enough alcohol in the crock to keep the fruit covered.  At the end of the summer, the crock stays closed up for about 3 months, allowing the alcohol and fruit to 'grok' one another.  The contents of the crock are then used over angels food, pound cake, or ice cream.

I have been wanting to throw something like this together for a while, and with the wife and kids out of town, I was bored enough to do it.  Mine contain different variations of stone fruits(peaches, nectarines, plums and cherries) and since it was my first time, I used a couple of different kinds of alcohol: some brandy, some vodka, and for one or two I combined Fireball Cinnamon Whiskey and 100-proof White Lightening Whiskey.  The first few jars I made, I tried leaving the fruits in big pieces...like quartering them.  Doing it this way, I was very stunned by how little fruit, and how much alcohol it took to top off each jar.  For batch two,  in addition to buying cheaper alcohol, I chopped the fruit up smaller, hoping to fill more void space in the jar with fruit than 80-proof.

Now, waiting is the hardest part...not just because I WANT TO TRY THEM NOW, but it is somewhat a leap of faith.  The jars sit in a cool, dark cabinet, and I won't really know until hunting season, 3 months from now, if these things are gonna kill someone or not.  How big of a bummer would that be to find out in mid-October than I have 12 1-quarts jars full of  'yuk' in my cabinet? 

Assuming these do come out okay, my plan is to give out most of them as Christmas Gifts...then again, even if they come out rotten, they can still be Christmas gifts...they just go out to the folks on the 'bad' list.