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It’s been a bountiful year for sour cherries hereabouts, and I couldn’t help but notice that my neighbor’s cherry tree was still bursting with them despite being picked at by me, another neighbor, the owner neighbors and countless birds. So I picked some more—almost 2 pounds—after the tree owners said to pick as many as I wanted. This time, though, I didn’t have time to put them promptly into a pie. So I did the next best thing: I froze them.

By now I had perfected my paper-clip-pitting technique and made quick work of that task after I washed the cherries. (Note to potential cherry pitters: Wear an apron. Cherries are juicy, and the juice stains like crazy.) Then I placed the cherries on a large pan and placed them in the freezer.

Ready for the freezer

Frozen cherries and juice

Once frozen, I transferred the cherries to a freezer bag and sucked all the air I could out of it with a straw and the zipper closed around it (my low-tech alternative to a vacuum sealer). I placed that bag inside a second freezer bag. Now, they sit tantalizingly in my freezer. What will they be? Clafouti? Preserves? Hmm. I wonder what else I could make with sour cherries. Any suggestions?

An addendum, by the way. Don’t take my story as the last word (or even the first word) on freezing cherries. Some people swear by FruitFresh and other products to ward off browning. A little browning doesn’t bother me much (and really, there wasn’t much browning with these cherries when cooked or frozen right away). The extension service people also give directions for freezing with sugar or syrup, if you’re interested. I was interested in getting the job done, so I did it in the most expedient way for me.

I’ve been reading Jennifer McMullen’s blog, “Rolling in the Dough,” for a while, and although Jennifer calls herself Baklava Queen (maybe you’ve seen her comments here), she’s also a food preservation and local food queen. Reading her blog has inspired me to try a little food preservation myself.

Food preservation doesn’t come naturally to me. Leftovers, yes. Preserving, no. Food preservation requires planning both in the preserving and eventual use of foods. Truth is, I’m a pretty lazy cook. That’s one reason I love summer produce. Besides being delicious, you can pretty much eat it without any preparation at all if you choose.

Food preservation, on the other hand, requires supplies. I don’t have supplies, as a rule. More important, you have to set aside time to prepare food that you aren’t going to eat for a very long time. That concept is not part of my food experience. Forget delayed gratification. I like to cook because I like to eat.

Jennifer, though, has nudged the inner Depression grandchild in me. My parents, both deeply affected by the Great Depression, were thrifty. Just the same, my mother, the chief cook, didn’t preserve food when I was growing up. I’m guessing that it was because she’d done far more canning than she’d ever wanted to when she was growing up on a farm in the Depression. Furthermore, I can think of few things more uncomfortable than spending hours tending to boiling water canners at the height of the hot, humid summers we have in eastern Kansas. After I’d left home, Mom took up freezing, but I never paid much attention.

Fast forward a couple of decades, and there little Ms. McMullen, whom I’ve never met but I suspect is 20 years younger than I am, is canning and freezing and heaven knows what else. I, meanwhile, have allowed really good local food to turn to goo in my refrigerator when I didn’t have time or didn’t know what to make with it. Yes, I compost such items, but it’s not the same.

The worst time for me, as a subscriber to Rolling Prairie Farmers Alliance, typically is in the spring when we get what seems like tons of green things: spinach, lettuce, mesclun, kale, chard, turnip greens, beet greens, herbs and then more spinach, lettuce, mesclun, and so on. Then I read Jennifer’s post about freezing greens. I sighed. I knew I had to do this. My mother would be appalled at my throwing food into the composter just because I hadn’t gotten around to doing something with it.

So I reread Jennifer’s post, read what they had to say at the National Center for Home Food Preservation, about freezing in general and about freezing greens in particular. Then I launched, blanching, squeezing, chopping and freezing what became two small packets of frozen greens, one kale and one beet greens.

blanched, chopped beet greens

blanched, chopped kale

Two tiny packets for freezing

Turns out it wasn’t too painful. So I decided to preserve more. I hacked off a bunch of my mint and dried it. I returned to my neighbor’s cherry tree and took nearly 2 pounds away from the birds. Then I pitted and froze those babies. I’ll give you details in the coming days. For the moment, though, congratulate me on my newfound preservation ethic. I don’t know how long I’ll keep it up, but it feels good so far. Still can’t envision the boiling-water canner, though.

Any preservationists out there? What’s your favorite kind of thing to preserve?

Finally, here’s a roundup of some food news in the area, aside from the daily reports of tomato-borne salmonella and rising food cost forecasts due to the Iowa floods.

Going against the grain. Gordon D. Fiedler Jr. over in Salina snags a bushel of wheat in this funny-serious take on eating locally. (Salina Journal)

Pizza cone in Kansas. Yes, just up the road in Overland Park, the odd (to my mind) conical take on pizza, makes its U.S. debut. Yes, I’m slow to find out. (Slice)

KCK saved from cow tonsils. Well, cow tonsils from a little processor in Missouri, anyway. Too bad the inspectors aren’t as good at the big plants as they are with the little guys. (Cattle Network)

Why not multicrop? Salina’s Fiedler did it last week, too, with the observation that lots of things grow in Kansas but not on the farm. (Salina Journal)

Kansas eager for lab. If anybody in Kansas is worried about farm and ranch pathogens being brought here on purpose, they aren’t very noisy about it. (KC Star)

Food safety, or not. K-State’s Doug Powell has been getting a lot of press with the tomato salmonella issue and other food safety questions. (Barfblog)

Food safety, or not 2. Not exactly a local news item, although it does refer to one Kansan’s efforts, Paul Krugman explains why food safety has been neglected. (NY Times)

Food bank hungry. The Harvesters in KC has fewer donations, more demand and higher fuel costs. (KMBC-TV)

There’s more than one way to pit a cherry, and here are five.

For sour (pie) cherries

These beauties are small, which means you need more of them, so easy pitting is definitely desirable. Try these methods.

• Your fingers. If the cherries are very ripe, just squeeze the stem end, and the pit will squirt out the blossom end.
• A paper clip. Insert end of small paper clip into the stem end of cherry, and lift out the pit. Observe (and ignore a lack of focus in one shot):

Insert paper clip

Slip clip under pit Cherry pitted

• A hairpin. Same deal as the paper clip.

For sweet cherries

These bigger fruits, which may hang on to their pits more than sour cherries, are well-suited to standard tools, and I recommend them.

• Plunger-type pitter (at right). Set a cherry on the rounded dish opening, preferably stem-end up, and press down with the plunger.
• Pincer-type pitter (below). Same deal. Set a cherry in the dish, and squeeze the two arms of the pitter to push the pit out. This type works better for me.

Other options

You can try these improvised tools, too:

• Chopstick or skewer. I’ve had mixed results with these, but you can give them a try. They seem most useful with ripe sour cherries, when you combine a poke with a chopstick and a pinch with your fingers.
• Soda straw. I haven’t tried this one, but I’ve heard about it, and it makes sense to me that it might work and, unlike the chopstick option, the opening in the straw might keep the pit from sliding away under pressure.

Your method

How do you pit cherries, if you pit cherries. Got any other tips to offer?