Life's a Bowl of Cherries...

And to quote Erma Bombeck, "If life's a bowl of cherries...what am I doing in the pits?" I had both today - big bowls of cherries and a big bowl of pits. Today was jam day and for the first time, I made cherry jam. I don't remember ever trying cherry jam, but it tastes just as good as strawberry or raspberry, and right now, I have plenty of cherries, so cherry jam it is. The pitting was a bit tedious, and yet... menial, repetitive chores like that can be soothing in their own right. (the screaming knots in my shoulder muscles are saying, "Soothing? Yeah, right...") I like to can, though, and am even somewhat proud of the semi-permanent brown lining around my fingernails that I will sport for the next day or so - evidence that I worked my rear off in the kitchen. I can wash and wash, but that fruit gets into the crevices around my nails in such a way, turning brown as fruit does in the air, that I just can't get it out. I'll need to get in the tub tonight with a nail brush if I want to eradicate my cherry stains. But I must say, seeing the little plastic tubs of freezer jam and my glass pint jars all red and shiny, sitting there on the counter, make me happy! Immediate gratification is the name of Donna's game and canning gives me immediate results that actually LAST, for several months, at least. Tomorrow will be the culminating triumph when I get to line them up all pretty on my fruit room shelf, and then rearrange them and reline them up again, until I'm perfectly satisfied with my display.

All fifty quarts of the peaches I canned last year are gone... baby... gone. I'll be sure to revamp my peach storage in a few months when the peaches come on. I did notice, however, that I have a few dozen pints of tomatoes that I'd better use quick... not sure how long those last, but I do know how long it took me to can them, and the last thing I want to do is waste them!

I'll no doubt wake up tomorrow morning and start the cherry day all over again, for I have a tree still full of cherries, and a laundry room full of laundry, and in the ring, cherries beat out laundry every time! My focus tomorrow may be on canning pie filling, along with another batch of jam, and maybe a few more trays of fruit leather (I only did two of those today and they are still not dry, but the wasps seem to like them just fine). So, until tomorrow... farewell my little fruity friends!