Opening Day for Cherries
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I’ve never been a sports fan. I’d rather have twelve root canals than have to suffer through a football game. Going tailgaiting is my idea of hell.
Maybe this is why I didn’t get along so well with certain boyfriends I had in the past. Their lives completely revolved around sports. They breathlessly awaited Opening Day of baseball season, were glued to ESPN TV during basketball season, and then seemingly out of nowhere it would be football season. Which, to my horror, led right into back into baseball season again.
To me, it’s an endless wheel of nonsense. Like Sisyphus pushing the boulder up the hill, watching it roll back down again, only to push it back up again — for eternity.
This is one of the reasons I was so happy to find Seth, who confided to me on our first date that everything he knew about football you could fit in a thimble. He said he bought a copy of Football for Dummies so he could talk sports at work, but he never could get past the first few pages. I think that was the very moment I fell in love with him.
Sometimes I wonder if sports are an artificial way to satisfy a natural hunger to stay in touch with the seasons. We’re all excited for the first flowers in spring, the first firefly of summer, the first brisk autumn day when we buy new pencils for school and pull out our sweaters and wool socks. Even here in Southern California, though the seasonal shifts are less exaggerated, we do appreciate and look forward to warm summer days and cool and rainy winter nights. We gather around the water cooler to discuss the fall Santa Ana winds, and we bring bags full of avocados or Meyer lemons from backyard trees to our office mates or friends.
A century ago, we lived closer to the land and we were in tune with the seasons. We farmed and grew vegetables and we celebrated the planting season and the harvest. Families and neighbors spent weekends making hay, building barns, and canning and preserving. Now instead of doing these things which really do foster a sense of community and togetherness, we sit in front of the TV, watching football and eating storebought pies laden with industrial waste products marketed as food innovations: Crisco and high-fructose corn syrup. (Is it any wonder Americans got so fat?)
Perhaps this is a reason people get so fanatical about sports: we are out of touch with the seasons. We feel disconnected from the land — the very thing that supports and sustains us. We feel a sense of loss — and we feel powerless.
This Saturday was my Opening Day. I saw (and promptly bought and ate) the first cherries this weekend at our farmer’s market in Santa Monica. Cherries are my very favorite fruit, with peaches running a distant second. There is nothing like homemade cherry pie with vanilla ice cream. A warm peach cobbler is pretty good, too.
I’ve been sipping my coffee this morning and looking at this website: PickYourOwn.org. I guess it was the cherries I bought at the farmer’s market yesterday. Or maybe it was the blood orange marmalade I picked up. I really want to learn to make marmalade.
I’ve been wanting to try canning and preserving for years. I remember when we went to Tuscany a few years ago. We stayed in a bed and breakfast and took Italian cooking classes, went wine tasting and truffle hunting with a real truffle hunter and his truffle hunting dogs. The family that ran the B&B canned all their own tomatoes each year — and the tomatoes would last them all year long.
I always grow my own tomatoes but I’ve never canned them. But I think I’m going to this year. If you don’t have a garden, you can go to a You Pick farm and get very cheap prices on produce.
Click here to search for a You Pick farm near you.
Click here to read how to do canning, drying, freezing and preserving.
Here are some typical U.S. dates for a few common crops (the South will be the earlier end, and the North, the latter):
- March – April: Asparagus
- May-June: strawberries
- June- July: cherries
- June-August: blueberries, blackberries
- July-September: peaches, figs, tomatoes, green beans
- July-October: raspberries
- August – figs, fall raspberries start, early apples
- September-October: apples and grapes
- October: late apples, pumpkins
- December: Christmas trees
We are so lucky to live in Southern California. We have fresh local tomatoes almost all year long. There are only about two months in the winter when they are not at the farmer’s markets. But no matter where you live, we are entering the season for picking, pickling and preserving.
When trying to decide what to put up, it’s a good idea to consider what your family eats most often and what’s expensive and/or hard-to-find during the winter months.
I’m planning on going cherry picking in the next few weeks. I’ll pit them and freeze them so we can have cherry pies and cherry reduction sauce (with roast duck) all year long. Think I’ll make some cherry preserves, too. And I’ll use my dehydrator to make dried cherries to top granola and fil mjolk, or to put in winter salads with crispy nuts.
I’m also excited to make lacto-fermented pickles (recipes to come) and lots and lots of pesto.
Photo credit: Silkegb on Flickr
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18/05/2009 at 8:58 am Permalink
Hi Ann,
Even though I’m an athlete, I found your opening day analogy very entertaining. I agree, we spend too much time in front of the TV eating refined and contaminated foods.
I have yet to try it, but I look forward to growing my own food and hope that I’ll look as forward to “opening day” as you do!
Excuse me as I get back to pushing my boulder up the hill.
Vin | NaturalBias.com’s last blog post..How Sugar Can Ruin Your Life
18/05/2009 at 9:32 am Permalink
Cherries.
Cherry cobbler.
Sprinkled with cacao nibs.
*shivers in delight*
Local Nourishment’s last blog post..Grocery shopping done differently
18/05/2009 at 10:02 am Permalink
That was so fun to read! I’m forwarding it to Kent because maybe, just maybe, we’ve found the root cause of all his sports addictions! I’d like to know how there are so many “big games”. He’ll say, “Kel, it’s the playoffs!” Next it’s, “Kel, the Tigers haven’t been in the World Series in ______ (who cares) years!” “Well, this golf tournament only happens once a year!” “Kel, if Michigan wins this game, then they’ll make it into the ______(who cares).” The list goes on! Good thing he’s still a pretty good husband and puts up with a few of my issues, too.
Kelly the Kitchen Kop’s last blog post..Genetically Modified Bread Yeast & My Sourdough Bread Struggles
18/05/2009 at 11:21 am Permalink
Not fair…I can taste the cherries, but we don’t have them in New York yet! They’re my favorite too! No surprise there.
18/05/2009 at 12:29 pm Permalink
@Vin – I should have specified. I didn’t mean people who actually DO sports and are real athletes. None of my ex-boyfriends were addicted to DOING sports. They were all addicted to sitting around WATCHING, not doing. So no, I don’t think your being an athlete is the same thing as pushing a boulder up a hill.
@Kelly – Now you’re going to get me in trouble! I do think sports fans would be less obsessive if they had other things to occupy them — like planting and harvesting. Not that farmers would NEVER watch sports — but maybe we wouldn’t be so caught up. Just a theory, anyway…
18/05/2009 at 1:20 pm Permalink
Oh I love this post in so many ways. I have been weaning my husband off of the boulder pushing for 5 years now, and he is making excellent progress! (helps that we no longer have TV). I think you forgot to mention all the golf and tennis matches that smoothly fill in the short transitions between baseball-football-basketball. Ug. I’m with you too, that actually playing sports is different.
Anyhow, I love being in tune with the seasons. I wish that our growing season was as full as yours in S. Cal, but we fare pretty well here in Oregon. A great link I found to benefit nation-wide readers is this peak-season map from Epicurious: http://www.epicurious.com/articlesguides/seasonalcooking/farmtotable/seasonalingredientmap so I thought I’d share.
Cherries, for us, will have to wait a few more weeks, but our first CSA harvest box comes today, so it’s opening season here too =) I hope to post about it for real food wednesdays this week.
18/05/2009 at 1:22 pm Permalink
Cherry clafoutis is my favorite cherry recipe – that or raw cherry ice cream. I just finished putting the crop calendar together for our market and it made me feel all giddy and day-dreamy. There something so special about each month and what it offers. My favorite are the wild apricots that come in late July and early August. They’re so flavorful and cute too – only about the size of a cherry. They may cultivated apricot look like behemoths.
Jenny @ NourishedKitchen’s last blog post..Real Food Stories: Nicole
18/05/2009 at 1:51 pm Permalink
Ann Marie,
I’m right there with you! I’m SO excited that summer is coming and that means FRUIT!!!
I went thru a ten pound box of cherries: made 2 varieties of cherry jam this weekend! Then I made RAW white peach ice cream & a batch of honey sweetened peach jam & pureed what was left of my box of peaches…sorbet anyone?
Fun fun fun
I would love to get together & do some canning with you if you’d like! Let me know!
19/05/2009 at 5:44 am Permalink
Hi Ann, I hope you didn’t think I took offense. I was just joking.
Although participating in sports provides more exercise and fulfillment than watching them on TV, many sports do have a repetitive nature to them that could easily fit the Sisyphus analogy even though it’s not what you meant.
What’s the point of running circles around a track or sprinting back and forth on a field or court just to score points? I obviously have my own answer to that, but also know how silly it can seem to some people and have no problem admitting that they have a valid point of view.
Sorry for the tangent. Back to cherries …
19/05/2009 at 9:28 am Permalink
I LOVE cherries. Okay, I do enjoy sports, I’ll have to admit. But I’d rather play than watch. Anyway…I do like the “opening day” analogy!
I wish we had more local cherries around here! (I’m in North Texas) At least we have peaches, although it seems the season is too short! I will definitely have to work on canning some this year!
Alta’s last blog post..Kids in the Kitchen: Grilled Citrus Teriyaki Shrimp Kabobs
19/05/2009 at 5:52 pm Permalink
I would rather do something active than watch sport. Another alternative to canning the seasons fruit is freezing. You can vacuum seal homemade fruit sauces, jams, jellies, or fruit compotes in widemouth pint and quart jars, leaving an inch of space below the lip in the jar. Once chilled to refrigerator temp, you can freeze the filled jars.
I love homemade cherry sauce sweetened with stevia and honey on top of vanilla or avocado flavored Ice Dream (ice cream made from coconut milk) from The Ice Dream Cookbook: Dairy Free Ice Cream Alternatives with Gluten Free Cookies, Compotes, and Sauces.
Chef Rachel’s last blog post..Dairy-Free Ranch Dressing
20/05/2009 at 7:04 am Permalink
I love it! My husband is obsessed with football (insert eye roll here). I would rather be harvesting the last of our tomatoes and canning them for the year, picking apples from our apple tree, or braiding onion to hang for winter. He promises to help more with the garden this year, so we will see if gardening supersedes the All-America (eh hem) game of football.
Have a great day and thanks for the post.
Gretchen’s last blog post..Dossier is Sent…