In Season & Fresh from the Garden, the Fields, the Orchards & the Woods
I first encountered really fresh cherries when I was 15 – a defining age to meet a flat of just picked sun-gorged brilliant cherries, I can tell you. On the tropical island where I grew up, cherries do not fruit – they grow, but without …
I do not recommend trying to make ice-cream at a 4-H Camp without an ice-cream maker, without electricity, in 90 ° F weather (32 C) and in 20 minutes. It just does.not.work. The kids were good sports about tossing or shaking leaky bags full of …
It’s sour cherry time – or rather, sour cherries are just over here in the Virginia Piedmont. A kind cherry tree owner offered me their tree to pick, and I gratefully enjoyed the privilege. But as the garden is going gangbusters (with planting, harvesting, cleaning and maintaining – ALL AT THE SAME TIME!!!), I have little time to write down recipes, so photos is all we get. Maybe I’ll scribble down some of the recipes in the next few posts…
When sour cherries are in season, one rushes to pick, pick, pick and then pit, pit, pit and process. Because the season is very brief: on Memorial day they are blushing, on June 15, they are over!
So what to do with sour cherries:
– pit them, toss them with sugar, other berries and enjoy as a sweet-tart refreshing dessert
– pit and freeze for later use
– sour cherry preserves
Cherry blossoms in early April are incredibly lovely, aren’t they? and incredibly fragile. They open their snowy petals for pollinators to do their jobs when the chance of freeze or frost is still real and so one wonders: is this too early? will a frost …