Sunday, July 5, 2009

Back to Say Hi....And Some Cherry Pie


I’m back. Life has been nutty lately; mostly in a good way, but there’s been a few trials sprinkled in too. Most importantly, we are thankful we all healthy now and it’s my intent to post to this site regularly.

It’s perfect timing that I’m resuming this post immediately after sour cherry pitting time. For the past three summers, we’ve pitted cherries together with my grandmother’s antique cherry pitter. At two, my daughter was interesting in standing on a very tall stool and turning the crank a few times; at three she was excited about the whole process until the crank got stuck on a stubborn pit and she got frustrated. This year, I gave her the small crate of cherries and a few instructions and she did everything from washing to dumping the pits at the end.

First we made muffins with the freshly pitted cherries. To our old-standby muffin recie, we added a ½ cup of whole wheat flour for nuttiness and a bit of healthfulness. We also added a whole teaspoon of vanilla to the recipe for 12 muffins. Mmmm, the aroma of cherry vanilla muffins was sublime.

Next, we made a 4th of July rhubarb cherry pie. The rhubarb was from our garden and I had to pick it in the rain. (Yes, it rained on our parade yesterday.) The deep red, sweet-sour pie was the perfect end to our meal of burgers from the grill – eaten inside – as we waited for the rain to stop and fireworks to begin.