Jammin'

Back in 2003, we first picked cherries from our neighbor's tree. That day got me one of my favorite pictures of the girls ever.

I love the expression on Sarah's face, and that the colors really pop. Lauren is just being cute. Sadly, this scanned image doesn't really show the crystal clarity of the prints.

That first year, we took all the cherries and made a pie. And that was one tasty pie. But eight servings later, it was gone. No more delicious cherry goodness. There was much sadness.

Last year, we picked cherries again (if they don't get the net on the tree soon enough, the birds devour the cherries in no time flat). I knew I didn't want to do a pie, but I didn't know what I did want to do with them. So I froze them. Sadly, most of them are still in the freezer. Sure, some of them made fabulous cherry lemonade slushies, and I wanted to do muffins with some, but I never got to them.

This year, I had a plan. I wanted to make jam. So the kids and I went over and picked for a while. It was difficult, getting around under the net, and it was hot. Sadly, I didn't get any classic pictures that will go down in my memory as Top 10, but we did get a fair number of cherries.

After picking, the cherries had to be pitted. And, since I didn't get to them that very same day, or even the next day, they had to be sorted to get rid of the ones that had gone bad. That was absolutely the most tiresome, annoying part of the whole process. I don't have a pitter, so I used a paring knife, and ended up giving my thumb some shallow cuts in the process.

Once that was done, I mashed them up a bit, threw them in a big saucepan, added some pectin, and brought it up to a boil. Then I added the sugar, let it boil again, and ladled it into the (already prepared) jars. Hot water bath was after that. The cooking part of it didn't take that long, and wasn't hard at all, but was really hot from the steam.

The next day, I tried some of the jam. Heaven! It was SO good, I couldn't believe it. Sweet and tart, clear gel with chunks of whole cherries floating in it. I have one of the jars to our neighbor (I'm not even sure if they got any of the cherries themselves).

To be continued tomorrow . . .