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.  

6 comments:

The Fitness Diva said...

I bet that pie was sooooo good! It really looks delicious! ;)

Louise's Musings HerbsCraftsGifts.com said...

Yep, it really was. The 4 cups of fruit really made it thick and very rich. (Love Pillsbury premade pie rounds!!) Thanks

Danna Crawford said...

Thanks for sharing! First time I've heard about these types of cherries! Great presentation!

Louise's Musings HerbsCraftsGifts.com said...

It was interesting to say the least. They are so small.

Split Rock Ranch said...

Sure looks and sounds yummy! I'll bet the brie with chokecherry jam will be delicious, too.

Rachele said...

The baked brie with cherries (and maybe some orange) sounds super yummy. 2000 cherries? Wow. I'm also curious about choke-cherries. I haven't heard this term. Guess I'll be heading to Google now to find out. Enjoy your efforts!