How the Moss's Got Into Fish House Punch

My Dad just finished his 7th round of Coffee picking this season on the farm. That makes for about 3,500 lbs. of cherry--he expects to set a new production record. Interesting to me how a farmer can radically improve the yield of even a well established orchard with good practices. At first the yield declined as he pruned and weeded, but then it started producing more than twice what it when he first inherited the farm from my grandparents.

BTW, my father has a weather station at the farm that logs the data online. Those of us shoveling snow can just look on data like this and be jealous:

Sick--just sick.

Anyway--about Fish House Punch. Our version this year substituted Apricot Brandy for Peach Brandy (which is hard to find in the LCBO, for some reason). It turned out really well, but I think I should experiment more with the recipe. Different rums, for example.

So my mom decided to share the story of how we got into making this deadly brew:

Fish House Punch--from my memory---the very first time that I heard of it was when we tasted some at Tay and Chris' home in Ohio. They had made some for a party they had hosted. We started to make it the first sunday in Advent after we moved to Wichita and we had the lvingroom furniture rehopolstered and custom drapes made at the Ethan Allen store for the livingroom picture window. The reason I remember this is because I had gone to a presentation at the store about colonial christmas traditions and was given a handout with recipes. I had watched a film that day that showed an old New England village and in one of the homes, the family had made Fish House Punch and was serving it to people who stopped by to visit. One of the recipes on the handout was for Fish House Punch. We decided to try making it and when I checked in my Williamsburg Cookbook (which I think Lynne now has) the recipe matched the one from the handout from the store. It became a tradition quickly to make Fish House Punch the first sunday of Advent. We learned early on that it is very potent and people can get easily plastered!! Anyway, that is the story as I remember it.

By "Tay" above she means my Aunt Tay, not me. Yes, Tay has been both a man and woman's name in family (which I think is pretty cool).

-t