I grew up eating violets from the back yard.

I've been thinking a lot about ingredients that I can grow or forage myself. One of these thoughts was to make my own creme de violet from foraged violets. My first experiment was mostly a failure, but I am going to keep trying. Here is what happened:

I harvested about two cups of violet flowers (loosely packed) and put them in a jar with two cups of Grave's 190. As you can imagine, picking that many violets takes a while. So, when it came time to add the alcohol, I made the lazy and inadvisable decision to leave the base of the flower intact, rather than pull off the individual petals. Within about 10 minutes, the alcohol had turned a wonderful blue color. The next morning, however, it had turned green.

A lovely green , to be sure, but not what I had hoped for.

The second disappointment was the flavor, or rather lack thereof. Apparently the problem is that I don't live in France. American violets aren't nearly as fragrant of flavorful as the French variety.

So here's the plan for my next experiment. I'm going to harvest more violets and this time I will remove the base of the flower. Without any green matter, I should be able to macerate the petals for a week or two without compromising the color. After that, we'll see what kind of flavor I wind up with. If the flavor is not strong enough to be the primary flavor of a liqueur, I think I'll use it as coloring for something else.