Recipe time!

You know how you can tell springtime has come to the Rockies? You get eighteen inches of snow and start craving fruit in a weird way. I’ll toss up some pictures of our truly ridiculous amount of snow later, but for now, here’s how I handled the weird fruit cravings: I made a blackberry peach shrub.

No, I did not GMO myself a new fruit shrubbery — the word itself comes from either “sharba” or “sharab,” an Arabic word meaning “drink.” Their Arabic origin and their long history were an inspiration for the use of “sharúb” in Shield of Silence.

The most traditional historic sharab I’m aware of blends mint and ginger with vinegar and water. Their descendant drink, shrubs, have a pretty storied history in the US. I’ve heard multiple origins — that they’re a way to preserve fruit, that they were an alternative to alcohol, that we used to think drinking something cold on a hot day would make your stomach seize. Whatever the history, they’re delicious and refreshing, and I first started making them in 2015.

It’s not Palisade Peach season just yet, so my peaches were frozen. You will get a tastier, more golden shrub if you use fresh, juicy peaches. Also, quick note, this shrub is a “hot” or “warm” recipe, because I am impatient; there are “cold” variants that use more fruit, more sugar, take longer, and make way, way more shrub. They’re the more traditional variant, but I think we did okay here.

1 lb frozen peaches
1 cup blackberries
1 cup white sugar
Cinnamon by eye/to taste
1 cup water
1 cup apple cider vinegar

I threw my sugar into a big pan, added cinnamon on top, threw my fruit in, then poured in water. Then I let it simmer on medium heat for a while (ten minutes?), stirring frequently to heat the peaches through and separate them, until the syrup came together. I knew we were good when the fruit looked “tired” (which mostly showed in the blackberries; they blanched). It was still watery when it came together, but it looked like wine and smelled like pie.

Once I had my syrup, I threw in the vinegar and raised the heat, stirring through, until it came to a soft boil. Once I had that boiling, I pulled it off the heat and stirred it until it was calm, then strained out the fruit.

Shrubs should be stored in an airtight container in your fridge. The syrup fruits are fantastic on vanilla ice cream. Unless you are the kind of person who drinks pure vinegar for funsies, shrubs are best enjoyed as the mixer in a cocktail or mocktail, but hey, if you want to drink ’em straight, more power to you.