Berries and Cherries

Or Country, with just a smidge of gangsta

Photo credit: Darwin Bell

From my Facebook wall: “Today I ate so many raspberries, I swear I’m going to crap jam.” *

Oh yay. More fruit.  Raspberries are in season, so I schlepped the boys out to the country again, where we picked about five pounds of black and four pounds of red. If you ask me, the best part of the day was being in the quiet air, spending time with my favorite people and supporting local farmers. If you ask my kids, however, the best part was when Mom fell into a gopher hole, shouted incoherently, and dropped on her can with half a quart of berries scattered around her.

And all of our work took place within view of the Perry nuclear power plant. That is a little creepy looking, right? It’s not just me? Because while I know some people would consider my private worries silly, I can assure there’s nothing silly at all about zombies. Or waking up with a third arm, which — I’m sorry but it needs to be said — is coming out of an awkward place. So while we had a good wholesome time, we also had our share of missteps. For example:

My good spiritual comment of the day: “Don’t worry about what you have in the basket or how much you still need to pick. Just focus on picking that one berry in front of you. Before you know it, you’ll be done. Work, rest, enjoy yourself.”

My bad spiritual comment of the day: “Jesus Christ, something just stabbed me in the ass.”

Because oh yeah, raspberry bushes have prickers. Lots of them. Also, the black raspberry juice looks like blood on your hands. Sometimes there’s real blood there too, but you can’t quite tell. But a day isn’t a day if you haven’t had to deal with a prick or two, so we finished up, wiped our hands, and went swimming.

Once we got home, the preserving work was easy: I set aside enough for us to eat in the next couple of days and froze the rest. Some are sugared and some are packed plain into freezer bags.

Sugared

Wash and dry berries. Mix with 1/2 cup of sugar per quart of berries and let sit 10 minutes. Pack into containers and freeze.

These are useful if you plan to bake pies or cobblers; to pour over waffles and pancakes, shortcake or poundcake; or to serve bowls of sweetened berries for dessert.

Plain

Wash and dry berries. Place on cookie sheet, not touching each other, and freeze until solid. Then throw frozen berries into a ziptop bag, squeeze out as much air as possible, and put in the freezer.

These work well for when you just need a few berries here and there: smoothies, yogurt parfaits, or a quick nonsugary snack.

It also helps if you mark the contents and date on your freezer container.

I never updated on our cherry experience. It turned out pretty well; we picked 30 pounds of sour cherries. Yikes.  Thank goodness, I was able to get my hands on two real cherry pitters from the little hardware store a few miles from the orchard. That saved my butt.

Some things I learned:

• 30 pounds is a fricking lot of cherries.

• You can lead a boy to the pitter, but you can’t make him help.

• Retelling the story of the Little Red Hen is so lame. It is also ineffective.

• It requires about six hours of pitting if you work mostly alone and take breaks.

• When you have been pitting — throwing the pits and stems into a bowl — for so long that it seems appropriate to cackle “no stress, no seeds, no stems, no sticks” to your seven-year-old, it’s time for a break.

• Oh, and the practical stuff. From 30 pounds we got the following: 16 half-pint jars of jam; filling for 4 pies; 5 quart-sized freezer bags filled with an unmeasured amount of cherries/sugar.

Later this week blueberries should be ripe, so I’ll come back and update on our progress then.

*To my Facebook friends: Sorry for the repeat. To everyone else: Aren’t you glad you’re not my Facebook friend?

Tags: cobbler, dr dre, how to freeze, Perry nuclear power plant, pie, raspberries, sour cherries