Monday, August 16, 2010

MY 1st EXPERIENCE with CHOKE-CHERRIES

 

Late last week a very good friend passed on to us, 5 pounds of Choke Cherries, that she had gotten from another member of the Knights of Columbus.

I had never eaten them or even worked with them, so I knew it was going to be an adventure.

1st thing was to remove the stems and leaves. Phyllis said she popped the pit out at the same time.  Me, being a know-it-all, thought that certainly there was a tool to get the pits.   Boy was I wrong!!  

Following a recipe from the internet, I cooked them until they were soft, so that they could  easily be mashed through a strainer, sieve or food mill.

The strainer just let the juice go through and the pits got caught in the food mill.  Yee gads what a mess of this real, rich looking juice and fruit, that I know would stain our fingers, something awful.

At this point the fruit was still hot but we decided to let t cool and follow Phyllis's lead to do each one individually (daunting job to say the least!)

That worked but took the 2 of us, a few hours.  Fortunately we had plastic gloves!  

At times I can be alittle OCD and was curious how many cherries there actually were.  So we weighed 1 oz of pits and then all the pits.  There were over 4000 cherries that we had to touch them 2x.
  
 
The end result was 10 cups of fruit that I made into 4 pints and 5 -1/2 pints of jam and a pie.  The pie was yummy.  

Last year for our Christmas open house we heated Brie in the oven with raspberry jam on top and served with crackers.  This year I want to try it with the Chokecherry jam, maybe with some orange mixed in.  

Saturday, August 7, 2010

BACK TO SCHOOL PROMOTION - Unique Gifts

Can you believe it? Some kids are back in school already. 

We have many unique gifts for students and teachers 


Handmade in Peru, many sizes and color combinations.
Over 100 different designs in the popular Satin Stripe fabric. All drastically marked down !
Many titles of 'Survival Kits" including this one - School Bus driver; Teacher; Student; Coach; Karate and many many others.
Perfect for the playground, these visors have a spiral lace that do not pinch or cause headaches.  Washable in the dishwasher too!

So as you can see we have a variety of many different and unique things for everyone returning to school.  You can see them all in our eBay store.