Finally, summer. Finally. It sauntered in around the last week of July or so, after a long, cold, rainy spell. Now it’s the first week of August; school starts in a few weeks and it feels like we’re getting cheated. Summers are short up here, but this is ridiculous.
The kids and I went to the Tukey Orchard yesterday to pick pie cherries. There were no cherries to be had last summer because the freak frost the fall before killed everything so we went pieless for a whole year. Now, I’m not a huge pie fan. I would rather have cake any day. Most pie is just not appealing to me at all because, cooked fruit? Wrong. Just wrong. But sour cherry pie? That’s a whoooole different story. I have a major love for sour cherry pie. Well, cherries in general, but pie. Let’s get something straight here: I’m not talking about that sticky, gooey, gelatinous goo from a can like mom used to make. (My mom, anyway. She was an awesome cook but she had this one completely wrong.) No. I’m talking about glowing red, tart cherries fresh from the tree. Like these:
Here they are in a colander. The colors are so pretty I almost didn’t want to ruin them by putting them through the pitter.
We picked 18 lbs of those yesterday. I brought them home and put them in a cooler. Travis kept saying, “Mom, you’re gonna make cherry cobbler, too. Right? Don’t forget about cherry cobbler!” (He doesn’t have the pie love, poor kid.) Today, Val and the kids are off to the bike races all day and I am having a rare day of me-time. I put in a movie and pitted cherries. Then I put them into freezer bags and stashed them in the freezer for future pie (and cobbler!). There’s nothing quite like cherry pie in the middle of winter. After I got done with the cherries, I made syrup with the drained-off juice and made cherry lemonade. The rest of the syrup goes into the fridge and I’ll use it in seltzer and drizzle it over vanilla ice cream.
My newest passion is making fresh squeezed lemonade. I’ve been making it all summer and it’s not as hard as you might think: juice enough lemons to make a cup and a half of juice (about 6 large, 8-9 small). Pour a cup and a half of sugar into a cup and a half of water in a saucepan, heat until sugar dissolves and pour into a pitcher. Add lemon juice, ice and 2-3 cups of water or until it tastes right to you. (I use the juicer attachment for my food processor and can juice 6 lemons in about 3 minutes or less.) The taste is amazing; so much better than that frozen, canned stuff. And by the way? You can freeze your own concentrate: just pour the juice and the sugar/water mixture into a plastic food container and pop it in the freezer. When you’re ready, take it out and dump it in a pitcher and add water. So good.
The rest of my day is going to go something like this: bread, cheese and olives for dinner. Maybe a margarita? Knitting and another movie. Shhhhh. Do you hear that? It’s the sound of no one fighting.
Wild Potatoes 