Life with Zak and Rachel.: Cherry Heaven!

We came back from Zak's grandparents' place with two huge flats of bing cherries, and a gallon sized bag of sour pie cherries. We promptly decided that there was no way we'd be able to make use of two flats of cherries, so we bagged up one flat and distributed them to our fellow co-workers. Whew. One flat down.

I knew Zak had been itching to have cherry pie since we came back from the weekend, so last weekend I set out to make him a glorious pie. We made apple pie together a few Thanksgivings ago, and I might have made another pie since then. Either way, I'm no expert, but I did my best and the result was a pretty good pie! It had a bit more liquid than we would have liked, but boy was it tasty. We still have about a quarter of that bag of pie cherries left and I think I might whip up some kind of mixed fruit cobbler.

yum!

This week we impulsively bought an ice cream maker at a clearance price at Wal-Mart and made vanilla cherry ice cream, which was very good (& both one of our favorite flavors). Zak spent awhile pitting and slicing up cherries...he said to me, 'Do you know how much I love you? Look at my hands; you know how much I hate getting my hands this dirty.' (It's true, he really hates getting his hands dirty--I end up scooping out the pumpkin guts, cutting the chicken, etc.) Well, even though he was frustrated that his cuticles were dark purple, he sure enjoyed the ice cream! It was a very simple recipe and very creamy. I think next time we won't use as much cream.

poor guy

Today I am making cherry jam with the rest of the bing cherries. Unfortunately, a lot of them were moldy and yucky, but I still picked out 8 delicious cups of dark red/purple cherries. And pitted all 173 of them in an hour. It was a lot of work, but I then relaxed while the slow cooker did its thing and cooked the cherries into a jam. I was nervous because it was my first time making jam on my own, and I wasn't sure when I should ladle it out into the jars I had waiting. I finally got smart and scooped out a little bit into a small cup and let it sit for awhile. When I came back to check on it, it had started to set up. I figured I should just ladle out the jam and let it get to room temperature before putting it in the fridge. We haven't tasted it yet, but it sure looks like it'll be good.