Right now our farmer’s market is a virtual cornucopia of fresh delights. The smell of just-off-the-vine tomatoes and huge bunches of basil sitting in the sun was beautifully overwhelming! Perfect fava beans  laying in heaps, squashes of all shapes and sizes, potato “marbles” no bigger than the tip of your pinky finger, and Rainier cherries as big as your head (okay, that’s a slight exaggeration, but they were the largest I’ve ever seen).

We were there on a mission: to stock up on cherries and apricots for our canning party the following day. But it was oh so hard to stay focused! Everything looked so divine! Did I mention those tomatoes!?

We stuck to our rule: only two foods were going to be canned in one day and we had collectively chosen cherries and apricots. We bought a case of Bing cherries, about a half case of a mix of cherry varieties, and a case of apricots. Buying in bulk got us some big discounts too.

We arrived at Tracy’s house on Sunday rearing to begin. We pitted all the cherries (now there’s a job!), sterilized all the jars, and started our first recipe: Cherries in Wine. This is such a simple recipe and the result is excellent with both sweet and savory dishes (think roasted duck breast with a nice cherry in wine sauce). Recipe:

While the cherries were processing we moved on to the apricots. We cold packed them (canned them fresh rather than stewing first) and each of us “personalized” our simple syrup. We added lavender to some jars, star anise to others, vanilla bean, hibiscus, and even a version with white pepper corns, mustard seed and coriander. It may sound strange, but I guarantee it’s a scrumptious combination. And come winter, what a wonderful variety of flavors we’ll have!

Next weekend: peaches and tomatoes.

Possibly Related Posts:

• More Than You Want to Know About Cranberry Sauce
• Friday Fun Links
• How to Get the Seeds out of a Pomegranate
• Winter Squash is Delicious, Healthy, and in Season
• Breadfruit Coconut Curry

Yippee! It’s cherry season! More importantly, it’s Rainier cherry season. On the totem pole of cherries, Rainiers are at the tippy top. Created back in 1952 at Washington State University by Harold Fogle, the Rainier is a hybrid of both the Bing and Van cherries – the sweetest of the red varieties. Bless Fogle’s cherry-loving soul.

How sweet are they, you ask? Rainier cherries aren’t picked until they measure 17 brix (a sweetness gauge), and some farmers won’t pick them until they measure 20. To give you an idea of sweetness, a peach is considered perfectly sweet if it measures 13 brix.

Sweetness aside, these creamy-fleshed beauties are about as temperamental as a bride on her wedding day. Appearing briefly in June and July, they bruise if the wind blows too much and falter if it’s too hot. The father – er, farmer – is stressed the entire season.

Even though farmers will lose about 30% to the birds the cherries will still fetch about $5-6 a pound.

And they are worth every penny!

Possibly Related Posts:

• More Than You Want to Know About Cranberry Sauce
• How to Get the Seeds out of a Pomegranate
• Winter Squash is Delicious, Healthy, and in Season
• Breadfruit Coconut Curry
• Canning Cherries and Apricots