…or more appropriately in this case, it’s two 10-lb buckets of them.

I’ve been away from the blog for a while for a myriad of reasons, but mostly our new business venture and the wonderful distraction of travel.  More on travel in a future post (or several).

We’ve officially purchased the dental practice where my husband has worked for the last 6+ years.  It’s been a challenging, stressful, educational and emotional experience.  There’ve been meetings with lawyers, accountants, consultants and bankers. It’s amazing how many people are–and how much money is involved in the sale of a single business.  It still gives me a little twinge in my stomach when I think about the money part.  Hopefully, with continued hard work and dedication we can maintain the growth of the practice, keep the awesome staff that we love and continue to make it the only place patients want to be.  My husband is good at what he does and he really, really cares about his patients and employees so I think it’ll be fairly smooth sailing from here.  It’s actually been kind of fun for me to pull out knowledge and experience from my previous HR career to help with the people-related aspects of the transition.  Just like most acquisitions, everything seemed to happen at the 11th hour so by the time it was over we were ready for a break.

So, almost immediately following the transaction we left the country for 10 days in Iceland. Like I said, I’ll tell you more about that later.  I was home for a 3-day weekend between that vacation and a 2-week work trip.  As a present to myself, I spent about one and a half of those days in the kitchen, by myself enjoying one of my pastimes of preserving.   This time it was tart cherries from the cold state to the north, Michigan.

A lot of people in Ohio, and especially Columbus, have this rivalry issue with Michigan thanks to our rather lively college football culture.  While I enjoy football and OSU is my original alma mater, I’m not into the rivalry thing so it doesn’t phase me. Also, Michigan has tart cherries a plenty and I’m happy they’re willing to share.

I purchased them from Lynd’s, a local farm who has partnerships with other farms to help bring fresh produce to our local area.  I appreciate that Lynd’s is open about their use of other farms’ produce and they’re willing to expand the market for produce we might not otherwise have as plentiful access to in central Ohio.  I also have fond memories of going to Lynd’s for apple picking, corn mazes, pumpkin picking and open fires in the fall. It’s even where we got the apples to make our wedding favors.
*gets lost in thoughts of wonderful times…*

It’s funny how nostalgic I get when talking or writing about produce and preserving…

So what does one do with two 10-lb buckets of pitted, stemmed, washed tart cherries hanging out in their own juice?  Well, here are some of the things I made:

• Cherry Jam – one batch of regular and one with black pepper, both using recipe on back of pectin box
• Pickled Cherries – instead of five spice, I used a few peppercorns, a clove and about 1/2 tsp of coriander seed per 4-oz jar
• Maraschino Cherries – simply cherries in sterilized jars, then topped with Luxardo (maraschino liqueur) and refrigerated
• Cherry Jar Pies – recipe courtesy of a fellow Columbus blogger who’s got great ideas
• Cherry Juice – leftover juice from buckets, boiled, ladeled into sterilized jars and water bath processed for 15 mins
• Canned Cherries – in light syrup (6 parts water to 1 part sugar)
• Cherry Syrup – sweetened the leftover light syrup from canning the cherries and added a couple cups of juice to it to concentrate the flavor
• Cherry Shrub
• Cherry Pie-lette

Often when I preserve huge batches of produce I end up kind of sick of looking at it for a while.  That didn’t happen this time.  I think the reason for that is 3-fold.

1. I made small batches of each item rather than many batches of a single product
2. I was so relieved to have some time in the kitchen after almost 2 weeks of not cooking, and
3. While preserving these things, I kept thinking about the people who would enjoy these products and the occasions on which they’d be enjoyed.  My husband tells me there’s an old European grandma inside me because I so love to feed and house people.

I think I may have found some helpful methods of coping with my apparent inability to keep produce purchases to smaller quantities.  Hey, if you can’t change habits, what’s better than adapting to make them less of a challenge?

I can’t wait to crack open a can or two of these cherry products to make dinner and drinks for people when I get home this weekend.  Nothing makes me happier than sharing my table of home-cooked food and drinks with family and friends.