Mulberry rum

As a kid growing up in the remote wilderness of Kansas we had several mulberry trees to pick over. So when I see them in DC I just sort of assume they're there to be picked over. It's not like other city dwellers eat them, even when the tree is in their own yards. So I have no qualms about picking over the trees that I come across in the city.

It was that kind of thinking that had me looking up articles about urban foraging. I have chives growing wild in my yard, mint that I taught the neighbor kids to pick over, prickly pears for a number of foods and drinks, and several mulberry trees that I passed on the way to work. If there's all that, what else is there?

I found several articles and there's some stuff I'm still trying to identify. But this article caught my attention. Mulberry rum seemed a great idea since I already knew how and where to find safe fruit.

So last June I hit the tree in Yummy's parents' yard and loaded up. OK, so it was more suburban foraging, but the limbs were nice and low. Sue me.

I mixed 1 cup of sugar for every 2 cups of rum. With that much sugar I had to heat the rum to get it to fully dissolve. Once it cools you have super saturated rum which is pretty tasty on it's own. Then I poured the rum into a jar that already contained the washed mulberries. Just enough that the berries were barely covered. The date I jarred it (June 20) and the date three months down the road when it was to be finished (Sept 20) were written on the lid and the jar was put in a cabinet.

September came and we didn't drink any of it. October... nah. November... come on, drink it already. For some reason we waited until February 11.

Here's what we had.

Purple juice with extra lumps. 

The berries? Not as good as you might think.

And here's Yummy sampling the strange purple brew. What? I was running the camera and sounding extra nasal. I couldn't do the drinking.