Today was the first day I noticed the wild cherries blooming along the river. Whether you call them chokecherries, hackberries or birdcherries, they are beautiful in bloom and a produce a wonderful fruit for cooking. Read more …
These muffins are chock-full of goodness: whole grains, hazelnuts, cherries, apples, and zucchini, plus a little booze to make everything even better. Assembling the muffins requires more steps than my usual recipes, but the taste makes it worth it—or so my non-vegan taste testers told me between bitefuls. Enjoy! Supplies measuring cups and spoons 2 mixing bowls cookie sheet muffin … Read more
Since the last muffins I made with whey protein powder turned out not only tolerable, but yummy, I thought I’d try baking with it again. This time I made fancy-schmancy chocolate muffins with dried red plums soaked in black cherry booze. They were scrumptious! If you don’t have protein powder, replace the 1/2 cup in the recipe with 1/4 cup … Read more
I made sauce out of some of the cherries I picked this summer. I often use applesauce in muffins, but decided to experiment with cherry sauce in this batch. They gave these muffins a slight pink tinge that the camera didn’t really pick up. If you don’t have access to cherry sauce, just purée some frozen cherries in a blender or … Read more
It’s hot here – the perfect weather for something sweet but light. When I was a kid I liked sucking on Flavor-Ice pops. Now I prefer something a little more elegant. Ingredients For 1 or 2 servings: 1 1/2 cup frozen pitted cherries 1/2 cup unsweetened applesauce 1/8 teaspoon allspice 1 packet Truvia (optional) Instructions Put everything in a blender or food processor (see … Read more
I went to pick cherries at my old co-housing today with Dekalb. These are tiny cherries, about the size of dimes, and their pits take up about have their volume. But they are nice and sweet, which makes them great for juice and jellies. I don’t know the name of the variety. One tree has yellow ones that are sweeter, … Read more
I went cherry picking today with my friend Dekalb — not at an orchard, but at a parking lot that’s been home to these trees for the past few decades. The trees actually predate the parking lot, or so we have been told by the parking lot owners, who are happy to have us pick the cherries without remuneration since it … Read more
I ran out of cherries to pick on Wednesday — at least, the sweeter ones. The tree with the more bitter cherries still had plenty, but I decided that it might be best not to pick them, as I then would feel obliged to juice them, and that could very well mean a most unpleasant drink. With no cherries to … Read more
Last week, I noticed a couple huge cherry trees on the edge of a park that on my route to work. The fruit hung down in racemes like chokecherries, and the ripe ones were very black. I had never seen a chokecherry tree that big (25 feet or so), plus the tree had rough and shaggy bark (chokecherry usually has … Read more
I was very excited a couple weeks ago when the black raspberries (aka black caps) began to ripen. They sell frozen black raspberries at Trader Joe’s for filthily cheap, but I generally like picking the local ones and, in any case, the local ones seem to have a slightly different and more complex flavor. So, the day after picking a … Read more