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Sunday, June 1, 2008

The Cherry Pitter

A bowl of cherries--the essence of late spring. These are not home-raised. Although I have planted many cherry trees over the years all have fallen to a variety of enemies: goats, weed-eater, brush hog. I've almost given up on having my own cherries, but I'm making one more effort this year with a little tree I transplanted from my son's house. We'll see. in the meantime, cherries have to come from the store.



These cherries were destined for jam. It's Derek's favorite and he is supposed to be home from Iraq next wee. I wanted to be sure to have black cherry jam ready when we gets here.

Anyone who has pitted cherries by hand knows how time-consuming it can be. It's not so bad with sour cherries that have free stones, but these sweet cherries were not willing to give up their seeds easily. That meant the cherry pitter had to come into use.


After 20 minutes of turning the crank on the pitter, the job was done and the cherries were ready for jam-making. The pitter is not the tool if you want pretty cherries to trim a cheesecake, but for getting seeds out for jam-making, it's perfect.


The finished product. I ended up with 13 half-pints of jam, plenty to keep us supplied until next year.

Now the next project--freezing strawberries. These are from the Hartley Farm in Cottageville, WV. My strawberry patch was newly planted this year; I'm hoping we'll have our own berries next year. But the Hartley's berries are a good alternative--sweet, home-raised, and full of good strawberry flavor.

7 comments:

  1. Derek isn't coming home til next wee? I just wee-ed minutes ago. Who knows when I may wee again? What if it is not months from now? I just had a pot of coffee, but that will bring about a problem of its own... Talk about pressure!

    Hold on, I got some liquid ambition killer in the fridge that ought to do the job...

    Aaron

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  2. An evocative post for me. I grew up surrounded by cherry trees, and my friends and I picked and sorted them to earn money for school clothes. I'm in London, and the cherries in the market here run about $8/pound, so I guess I'll miss the cherry season this year. Enjoy them for me!

    msmeta

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  3. Oh, man, how exciting...I love when the fellows come home! I've always wondered how you pit cherries other than by hand...now I know! Thanks for sharing the pics of all the deliciousness

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  4. OK, aaron, I used spellchecker but it seems to think my word was all right :-)

    msmeta, cherries here aren't too cheap either--$3.00 a pound. But I won't find them for any less so I gulped and bought them. Still, I did get a lot of jelly out of my $10.00 worth of cherries, so I'm satisfied. And they were so good!Wish I could send you a taste.

    Robbyn, I knew you'd like the pitter. I bought it in Virginia in 1972m I believe, and it was brand new. I think these tools are probably still available online or at Lehman's Hardware in Ohio (they supply the Amish with non-electric things). I paid about $9 back then--can you imagine?

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  5. I have a cherry pitter that came from Germany. It's plastic and has a little punch that takes out the pits and leaves the cherry pretty much intact other than the hole the punch went in and the pit went out. Tis way cool. Batsy

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  6. I've seen those in catalogs, Batsy. For recipes that need a whole cherry it would be preferable to my old-time type of pitter. I think I might look for one of those for my kitchen.

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