Thursday, June 10, 2010

Cherry Fanatic

It's no secret that I love cherries. Along with figs and fresh medjool dates, I am capable of eating them until I am sick. I just can't get enough!

A couple of weekends ago, I convinced Rico to go with me to Brentwood, an agricultural town in the Sacramento delta, to pick our own cherries. His immediate reaction was like Why on earth would anyone drive for 45 minutes in order to pay to pick fruit in the heat of summer? but he indulged me and we ended up having a great time. At least I did. I think Rico just enjoyed seeing me act like a child on Christmas as I searched for the darkest, biggest, juiciest cherries in the orchard.

After about 30 minutes of picking, we had 11 pounds of cherries and decided to call it a day. True to form, I ate about 6 of those pounds of cherries in the following week. When the fabulousness of the fresh fruit had weaned, I decided I'd make jam. I'm happy to report it was a successful project, and I now have all of the home canning supplies necessary to make jam out of the endless blackberries that have taken over our garden. Should be a tasty summer!







7 comments:

NOLA said...

Ha! I love Rico's reaction - so true for most people.

I, however, LOVE u-pick fruit! And love canning! What fun you had.

stacie said...

I did the very same thing with peaches....never has anything tasted so good as fresh picked peaches in the heat of summer right after a rain storm!

Unknown said...

I've been eating cherries that past two days...
We used to have a neighbor who picked blackberries when we lived up past Sacramento. He'd pick a few tubs like the ones you guys had for cherry picking and bring us a container filled to the top! We'd have blackberry cobbler throughout the entire summer... Ahhh.

Anonymous said...

looks like lots of fun! figs are my favorite!!!

Meg said...

I'm sooo jealous. It's too hot for cherries here!

Ali Ambrosio said...

~NOLA - I think he was still perplexed as to how people think u-pick is so fun even after we left. An interesting fact: every single person we saw picking was speaking a language other than English (ourselves included). Seemed to be a total tourist/new resident/foreigner activity!!

~Stacie - Ooh, peaches are at about #6 on my list of faves. I like nectarines more because of the skin, but would gladly fill buckets of peaches any day. So delish.

~Laundrygirl - Do you have a good cobbler recipe to share??? Let's do coffee soon.

~Aimee - I am crazy about figs. Any type, as long as they are fresh. There are tons of trees here in the neighborhood that I look forward to grazing from.

Ali Ambrosio said...

~Meg - may be too hot for cherries, but your garden has me wishing for that heat! Our tomatoes and peppers just started to wake up because it hasn't been that warm here yet, and even now it's only in the 70's.