Champ of Cherries

Cherry pie in winter: a slice of summer on your plate.

If you've never even considered trying your hand at preserving your own food, I hope this example of deliciousness gets you thinking about it. For just a minute or so. You can go back to your 21st Century life after that.

During our recent match with the Polar Vortex (or, what our grandparents would have simply called "The Winter Season") I found myself perusing my collection of digital memories from last summer. You can imagine the draw they had for me.  I ran across these little gems from cherry picking time on Old Mission Peninsula, Michigan (or, what my grandmother called "The Most Beautiful Place on Earth." Actually, I don't know if she called it that, but I do know she loved Old Mission).  The pictures made me make a pie. The pie made me eat it. I do not regret one moment of the experience.

Here's a step-by-step. 

1. Find some cute kids. I happened to have some of my own sitting in the back seat, along with a handsome nephew with an extra dose of personality. 

2. Convince them that picking produce is fun. For children with an overly-enthusiastic gardener for a father, this may be a test of your powers of persuasion. Remind them that they have never tried picking these fruits before.

3. Set them loose in a grove of cherry trees. Do not give them axes. Do not tell them stories about George Washington.

4. Bring the cherries home. 

5. Wash them under running water. Do not use soap.

6. Eat as many as you'd like. Even though they're not "sweet" cherries, we think they're still pretty yummy.

7. Don't eat the pits. Alternatively, don't break your teeth on the pits.

8. Remove the pits from the cherries you don't plan on eating fresh. Say, "This is the pits!" loudly until someone in the room laughs. It may take several tries to get the correct response. Don't give up. For pitting purposes, I recommend that you use one of these: 

http://www.amazon.com/OXO-Grips-Cherry-Pitter-Black/dp/B000NQ925K

Or one of these:

http://www.amazon.com/Leifheit-37200-Cherrymat-Cherrystone-Remover/dp/B001MSYWQW/ref=sr_1_3?s=home-garden&ie=UTF8&qid=1389663873&sr=1-3&keywords=cherry+pitter

The fancy-schmancy one comes with German instructions, so you can feel very frau-like.
9. Place pitted cherries in a plastic zipper-topped bag, gently squeezing to remove as much air as possible before sealing the bag.
10. Using a permanent marker, scribble the date on the bag. Toss it in the freezer and forget about it until January when you might need a reminder that Summer is for Real.
11. Come January (or earlier, if you like) grab the baggie from freezer, scratch off enough frost to determine that it contains cherries. Thaw a tiny bit on the counter or in the fridge. (This means just leave it alone while the relative warmth of your kitchen works its magic on the frozen fruit. In the deep throes of a polar vortex, you may wait a while for your kitchen to be "warm.")
12. Bake cherry-themed dessert of your choice. I recommend pie because it's from heaven. If you think you don't like cherry pie, it's probably because you've never had it made from cherries you picked yourself in the height of summer. It's the real stuff.

 Why aren't you eating real stuff?

P.S. - I don't usually make my own pie crust because I'm not as good at it as the people at Pillsbury. I still feel like a champ; A Pie Eating Champ.
P.P.S. - Leftover fruit pie for breakfast is practically health food. I promise.
P.P.P.S. - My husband thought he didn't like cherry pie, but that's because he doesn't like that stuff that comes in a can. He changed his mind and helped me eat the leftovers for breakfast. It was worth getting up before the kids.

Seeking Order in a Haphazard Way

As I reported in my previous post... I had a sick kiddo (or four) on my hands last week. Not fun. Not fun at all.
But not too bad, as sickies go. We have a lot to be thankful for.
Everyone is back on top of the weather.
And what weather we're having.  Thunderstorms? In November?  The booms were so loud the few pictures I actually have on my walls rattled.  Seriously.

This is not what I was going to write about. This distraction-while-typing thing happens to me a lot, even when the kridlets are in bed. Kridlets. I made that word up.  Then I joined urbandictionary.com just so I could add it and try to get a movement going.  The problem is, too many other people are all trying to introduce new words into our vocabulary and they probably get more chances to write because they don't distract themselves with utter nonsense!

WARNING: I'm about to present a picture of everyday life.  It isn't pretty.  Well, except for the serious baby and singing toddler.  Thanks to my Nine-year-old son, we have a permanent record of un-posed life.

 Me: surrounded by chaos and kridlets.

Anyway.

I am finding myself drawn to order and schedule lately, although my housework begs to differ.  But really, I am. Maddened by the "what to fix for dinner" chaos that haunts my 4:30 afternoon, I established a meal chart. Nothing new, nothing fancy, it is certainly nothing original.  But it helps.  That wasn't enough, because soon I found myself frustrated with the "what to put on our meal planning chart" problem.  So I almost-randomly decided that we will always eat specific food on specific days of the week. 

• Monday nights we always eat pasta.  Because I love pasta. And because The Father of My Children plays basketball every blessed Monday night.  I'd hate for him to be burdened down with a heavy meal. 
• Wednesday nights are Soup-and-Sandwich nights because it's also a "Church Night" and I thought soup would be a quick meal.  Only, it isn't always.  But oh well. Now my kridlets (see? I'm using it!) are learning to like different kinds of soup. 
•  Thursdays we have TexMex-style food because I haven't recovered from the taco obsession I had while carrying GBaby. 
• Sunday nights are cook-free nights and we have Nachos (made with leftovers from Thursday) and/or Popcorn.

Of course, I am without guidance for Tuesday, Friday and Saturday evenings but that's just because I haven't come up with specific foods to assign to those days. I'm sure I will, and I am hoping it involves The Father of My Children making some of his rather famous (at least as far as the kridlets - score extra points - and I are concerned) forays into the kitchen.

Here we are enjoying his delicious wings. I would never make wings from scratch.  I would have bought them pre-cooked in a bag from the grocer's freezer. But he's much more adventurous than I.

Why am I telling the World Wide Webfolks all this? Well, because. It's Monday night. I've decided that's the night I will write... and not feel one bit guilty about the housework.

Tid Bits

The man and I walked across the dewy yard to pick these lovely raspberries this morning. The children promptly ate them.

The two-year-old doesn't say "nana" anymore, but properly enunciates "buh-nana." I'm a little sad and proud at the same time.

Tomorrow we go on family vacation. I have nothing packed. For seven people. But I have carefully rationed the last drops of milk so that we'll leave nothing to stink up the fridge.

The man and I don't exactly see eye-to-eye on how clean a house must be before you leave for a week or more. I think clean sheets, mopped floors, scrubbed toilets are all "Must Do." He's content with empty trash cans and a mowed yard.


The nine-year-old has informed me that we NEED to get packing (literally) and we don't have time to sit at the computer. Funny how I'm not amused by his surpassing maturity.

Saturdays

When I was growing up, my parents had this "Saturday Morning Breakfast Club." Basically, it was a very large, drawn-out breakfast followed by lists of chores. Lots of food = lots of work. Breakfast eatings have always been my favorite, but this meal was a mixed blessing. I hated Saturday morning chores. Somehow, I expected that my kids would love them.