Well my dear little girls, this weekend officially marked the beginning of summer and for us our annual trek out to Brentwood for Cherry picking. I hope this is something we continue with your children when that day comes – way, way, way down the road. What a wonderful time we spend with the family – Grandma Cookie, Grandpa Bob, Becky, Larry, Grandma Maude, and this year we even managed to convince your dad to get up early and go with us as well. I think his reaction to the whole thing was the best, even if he doesn’t like eating raw cherries or blackberries, he was out there with gusto thinking of all of the things I could make for him from the fruit we were picking. Pies, Jams, cobblers, anything with sugar and a crust would be perfect as far as he was concerned, the more he thought, the more he picked and we ended up coming home with almost 20 pounds of fresh Cherries and 10 pounds of blackberries.
Which lead me to my first dilemma, what to do with all of this fresh fruit that wasn’t going to last longer than the weekend if even that long. With all of my gardening endeavors I realized that I wanted to learn how to preserve our crops in case we couldn’t eat it all before it went bad, so, I did what most people in their right mind would do, right? I got on the phone called my mother and asked if she still had all of her old canning equipment, once I got that squared away it was off to the hardware store to by jars and lids and pectin, and onto the internet to find recipes.
Sunday started with Blackberry Jam – I now know why blackberry jam is so expensive – by the time you get through picking, cleaning and processing it takes a lot of work for a small amount of end result. But oh my goodness does it taste good through the entire process. With the left over berries I had just enough to make a cobbler, much to the happiness of you girls and your dad.
Sunday evening we pitted all of the cherries, mental note for next year – we need to invest in a better cherry pitter. And Monday (Memorial Day) I set to work on Cherry Pie Filling and maraschino cherries for Stevie. By the end of this weekend, all told I have 9 jars of Jam, 2 jars of blackberry pie filling and 6 jars of cherry pie filling – canned and waiting to go into the garage for rainy days. Hopefully this afternoon I’ll have another few jars of the cherries and we’ll see if that recipe is a keeper.
Things we learned this weekend:
- Canning is a blast, but it is a lot of work, worth it though in the long run
- Make sure you wear clothing that you don’t care about when working with berries, I think I washed 3 different shirts and a few pairs of pants this weekend from getting cherry and blackberry juice all over them
- As always the best recipes are the most simple and food is always better when made and shared with the ones you love.
