Cherries!

We try to pick cherries each summer, Northwest cherries. They almost rival Oregon strawberries. We have a secret farm out in the Columbia Gorge that we go to year after year. You have to call ahead to arrange for a picking time, but at 75 cents/pound, it is a steal. This year my mom and her friend ended up picking for me as time was running out and we could not find times that worked for everyone.

My mom ended up picking one and a half flats of cherries for me last Thursday.  However we were leaving for a three day camping trip on Friday, so I had to do something with them before we left. I used my fabulous pitter!

My mom found this pitter last year...possibly at a garage sale, we cannot remember, but it works pretty well. I found this one on Amazon, if you cannot find a used one.  It is probably $30 well spent if you love cherries. It took me about 25 minutes to pit all my cherries (1.5 flats). While eating some this week (frozen-the perfect sweet snack) I discovered that a percentage of them still had their pits, but I am willing to live with that. Maybe if I took more time to review my work before I dumped them in freezer bags....

The results were a bit graphic:

Cherry pitting masacre

But oh so delicious.