Ode to Cherries

My husband's Uncle Tim owns a fantastic fruit orchard in Oregon. Every July, he generously disseminates a portion of his cherry harvest amongst the family far and wide. We were the lucky recipients of an extremely large offering of cherries a few days ago. Pictured here is just about half of the care package: My Tim has such sweet memories of helping Uncle Tim during harvest season when he was a young boy. Those days eating the ripe fruit straight from the tree has left him one of the more discerning cherry tasters I've ever known. It becomes quite the challenge to use our bounty in a way that does justice to Tim's favorite fruit. I think this year I finally hit on the winner. After years of trial and error, I'm going out on a limb to say that this is likely the best Cherry Crisp recipe you will find. It comes from testing out recipes from dozens of recipe sites and gathering the bits and pieces we like the best from each. I'm dubbing it after our fabulous cherry benefactor: ------------- Uncle Tim's Cherry Crisp Ingredients: Filling: 6 cups fresh pitted Bing cherries, sliced in half 1 1/4 cup sugar 3 tbsp tapioca 1 tsp almond extract Topping: 1 1/2 c all-purpose flour 3/4 granulated sugar 3/4 cup light brown sugar 1/2 tsp kosher salt 1 cup oatmeal 1/2 pound cold unsalted butter healthy sprinkle cinnamon Preheat oven to 350 degrees. In a large bowl, combine the filling ingredients. Toss to coat and let sit for 15 minutes. Meanwhile, combine the topping ingredients in an electric mixer with the paddle attachment. Mix on low speed until the mixture is crumbly and the butter is the size of peas. Pour filling into a 9x13 pan and spread topping evenly over the cherries. Place on a rimmed cookie sheet and bake for 1 hour until the top is golden brown and the filling is bubbling. Serve warm or room temperature with ice cream or whipped cream. If you can get your hands on this, all the better. (And yes, it would be worth the shipping.) -------------- I think maybe once my crisp has cooled enough, we'll be enjoying our treat during a family picnic on the peanut's blanket. This last spring I snatched up some "Oh Cherry Oh" fabric from Moda and made a denim-backed blanket for her birthday gift. Today seems like the perfect occasion to serve up its inaugural meal.

The last strawberry post

So I've been obsessing about my fruit this week. I had no idea how far 2 baskets of strawberries would end up stretching. I feel like I've been cooking with them for days and I still have the better part of a basket left! I thought perhaps you might be interested in the recipes I went with after all the teasing: 2 cups became strawberry topping for ice cream the first night. No recipe here, just mash with fork and sprinkle sugar and let marinate a few minutes. 4 cups went to a delicious strawberry pie that I totally screwed up. It wasn't the recipe's fault, it was me. Let's just say at the final crucial moment before entering the oven, the pie was whisked quickly back to the counter and re-opened. Don't ever try to lift a pie crust top off and then replace it. Trust me. I'm so sorry to dishonor you, "Joy of Cooking". Next time I'll watch what I'm doing. 2 cups went to 3 loaves of strawberry bread. Fresh out of the oven as I'm typing this. Haven't tasted it yet but it smells heavenly. 2 cups went to my first batch of freezer jam. I think I've eaten half a container on sourdough this afternoon. Oh. My. Goodness. Definitely a keeper and it may be where the rest of the berries end up. Another 2 cups or so have just been eaten fresh between meals. I definitely underestimated the capacity of these baskets. My third supply trip to the grocery store is in my near future. Honestly, I'm still not berried out. Guess that's a good thing since I'm definitely stocked for a while. Happily, my cutting garden is also coming along. I was able to cut my first "bouquet" this afternoon. The cosmos are much smaller than I had imagined, but I have these sweet little bud vases just waiting to be filled all around the house. Between the sweet berries and cute little cosmos, it was a fantastic way to end out the week. Happy weekend to you!

My girlies

I was lucky enough to get away to Madison this weekend to spend some time with college friends. It's been ages since my last visit and I had forgotten just how much I love that town. I imagined posting a fantastic photo post today chronicling our adventures at the Farmer's Market and around the Capitol Square but I was just too busy having fun to grab my camera. The only photo I managed to capture happened before the rest of the girls arrived. Oddly enough, I think it kind of sums up the whole visit anyways. Madison is just the kind of place where you might see something like this. It makes me want to run out to my nearest nursery and stock up on the supplies needed to hook my own bike up with some summertime bling: There are new babies on the way, new houses to admire, work accomplishments and stresses to commiserate over, and plenty of fantastic food to fuel the conversation. I was there for less than 24 hours and am already counting the minutes until I can visit again. I'll leave you with one final nugget from my fantastic weekend. This chicken salad recipe is To Die For. Everyone went back for seconds and I promptly went out to buy the ingredients to make it for myself this week. I'm completely addicted to Epicurious.com now. If you haven't already, be sure to check it out.