facial contortions

It's cherry season in Ontario... they're just ripening, those first few trees. The sours first. Then the sweeter varieties.  We're still just getting the US sweet cherries at the grocery store and I've been eating them by the bucketful. I think I'm also dosing myself with some form of penicillin, I forget to put the bag away into the fridge and occasionally as I stuff another handful into my mouth I notice there's some fuzzy crap growing at the stem.

I'm eating them anyway.

I also just brushed my teeth, so there's that awful thing that happens when you combine toothpaste and fruit. Face puckering and mouth smacking.

I'm eating them anyway.

There's this "half a tree" that grows around the corner from here. For the past 10 years I've been picking berries from it. It's overshadowed by some other scrub trees (hence it being half a tree) in an empty lot.  There's this ongoing conversation with the man who lives across the street who insists that we only get a good crop every other year. This is year three of what promises to be an AMAZING crop.  He says the tree goes thru a cycle. I don't bother to point out the "last frost date".

Year three of an early last frost date, no late surprises killing off the blooms.

I'm changing my walking route every day now to check on those berries. This year I want to try some sort of preserves... not just eat gallons of them daily for the week, so I've got to be prepared! Maybe I'll even freeze some and make some kick ass pie for next spring's pie off.

I'm going to drown myself in cherries.

chop chop

I've just polished off the last of the nachos, it's always salsa o'clock... but it reminded me that I still wanted to post a few of the pictures from salsa day 2012!

Cast: Masheff, Jenny, Bob, Em, Meg, Newfield, Pasheff, Moi, Jelly.

everybody gets washed and sterilized all at once...

just half of the veggies we used

peppers, toms, garlic in one pot, ketchup in the other pot...

the outdoor kitchen...

go big or go home.

by nightfall, we were ready to fall... but, it was all worth it in the end.

Greatest discoveries this year?
1) Frozen tomatoes are the way to go. The skins POP off once you put them in warm water, and the extra water can be squeezed right out of them. Plus, you can buy them frozen from one of the farms, and they've been washed and the spots have been cut off...
2) Raising the table will save your back! We used a few pieces of 2x4s and lifted the table, the difference was amazing.
3) Stopping for meals is IMPORTANT.
Last year we switched to doing all the chopping the night before (the peppers, onions, garlic and some of the toms). Doing this broke up the work in a way that didn't leave us hating each other by the time we finished.

Please drop something I can eat.

can can

It was only 10 hours work in the end... there were coffee breaks, and second breakfast breaks, and dinner, and shopping breaks...
And what is the result?

Something like 30litres of salsa
more than that in chili sauce
I can't be bothered to count jars of salsa verde... let's say 6 litres of that

Ketchup is resting (separate out some more liquid before we add the vinegar and spices and boil it down...)

I'm wiped.
But happy.

les tomates

It's nearly salsa day... Friday.. boxes of peppers, a freezer full of tomatoes, basket of garlic, bags of habinaros ... oh man... it's going to be awesome.

40% chance of rain....
meh... better than sunburns.

I've got my favourite apron ready, the kitchen tent will go up tomorrow (if it's not raining too hard), tables will be out and bleached.... Propane needs to be picked up, the new cooker needs to be assembled... jars need to be washed... We need to pick up onions, and the rest of the tomatoes....

oh! And we need a playlist... or a DJ!

And does anyone have a small canoe paddle we can adopt as our new spoon?


Photos will follow.