Oh hai!  ’Umembah me?  Yeah… I ran out of things to post about.  That happens in June.  There isn’t much to do in the garden so there isn’t much to write about. Rather than force it I just stop writing.  Happens every year.

This year, instead of continually not writing I’ve temporarily come up with something.  It seems as if I’ve found myself with a boatload of cherries.  That gave me an idea.  Write about the cherries!  Gripping journalism I know.

Exactly how did I come to amass a small fortune in cherries?  Awesomeness.  It all started with one of my fabulous coop tour hosts, Becky.  She stopped by the store to drop off their sign from the tour and she and I got to talking.  They were headed to visit her family and it just so happens that her dad has a 100 acre cherry orchard.  She mentioned something about emailing Mavis to see if she wanted to barter produce for cherries.  This is where I stepped in and said, “Hey!  I have gobs of produce I’d happily trade you for cherries.”  Sorry Mavis.  Becky was all too happy to trade me cherries for veggies.  So yesterday she came by with a large bag of Sandra Rose cherries, a small bag of Rainier cherries and a giant bowl of some sort of other sweet black cherry (much like a Bing but firmer).  I think I totally won that barter.  I gave Becky a cabbage the size of a small baby, 4 stalks of rhubarb and 2 giant heads of lettuce.

This afternoon I did my grocery shopping and the local green grocer had local sweet cherries (Bings or the like) for $1.98 a pound.  Considering they’ve averaged around $3.99 a pound this was a very good deal.  Consequently the conventional grocery had cherries advertised for $1.48 a pound, but I couldn’t find them in the produce department.  Needless to say I came home with about 3 more pounds of cherries (if not more).

I love cherries.  However, if I were to sit down and eat that many I would have some really good poos.  I didn’t have time to make jam this afternoon so that left freezing them.  In order to freeze them I had to pit them.  Do you know what a pain pitting cherries is with a knife?  With nearly 10 pounds of cherries to pit I invested in an inexpensive cherry pitter.

Now I’ve never used a cherry pitter before.  The photo on the box makes it look simple and much less messy than cutting cherries in half and fishing out the pits.  Yeah right.

First step is to attach the pitter to the counter top like so.

Then place a bowl under the opening thusly.

Um…  That is my smallest metal bowl.  Just for a scale reference, the bowl from an IKEA cheese grater came up higher than the opening on the pitter.  I resorted to plan B.  I put the cookie sheet that I wanted to freeze the cherries on under the opening and was back in business.

Next, load the cherries into the hopper.

One cherry goes down into the chute.  Quickly and firmly push the spring handle down and the pit will drop into the catch bin and the cherry will roll out onto into the bowl onto the cookie sheet.

Neat and clean.  Just like the photo.

My kitchen looks like Dexter has been there.  I had cherry juice on the counter, on the floor, up the wall, on the artwork and all over my feet.  My hands are still satined purple.

It may have made a mess, but the pits dropped nicely into the catch bin as promised.

I put the pitted cherries on a sheet pan lined with parchment paper and put the pan into the freezer.  I do this with raspberries, strawberries, blueberries and any other fruit I want to portion out over the rest of the year.  Once they are frozen I put them into a ziploc bag and label the bag with the year. (I still have strawberries and raspberries left from last year.)

I filled two whole sheet pans with cherries and had a few left over.  So what do you do with a few leftover cherries, besides eat them?  Why make cherry vanilla ice cream.  That’s what.  But you’ll have to wait for the recipe until tomorrow.