To Pit a Cherry, or Two Hundred

Last summer when T. and I went out to my parents' place in Washington State for the cherries (and to, you know, visit) I had some slick little Oxo cherry pitters shipped there a week in advance. Hey, I was excited. We don't get many cherries—much less sour cherries—down here in the GA.

I shouldn't have bothered, though, because we determined, through the highly scientific experiment known as a "race," that the paperclip does a much, much faster job. Also a better one, because it makes only one hole in the cherry rather than two, so the cherry stays nice and intact and plump—this is what you want if you're making brandied cherries or sour-cherry preserves, or freezing a quart bag of sweet cherries for a winter clafouti.

First get yourself a large paperclip and unfold it once, like the one in the picture above.

Pull off the cherry stem:

Hold the cherry firmly in one hand and jam the small fold of the paperclip into the cherry where the stem was, angling it a bit so it slides right along one side of the pit:


You'll be able to feel when the bend in the clip has reached the end of the pit. Now lever the pit and sort of pull it out the hole you just made. You might need to apply a little pressure with the fingers holding the cherry. (It's easier than it sounds.)

Cherry, one hole, no pit:


This was about four pounds of Bing cherries, and it took maybe ten minutes. So raid the supply closet at the office and pit some cherries this weekend!

Lunchboxes

T. wakes us up at 5:30 or so each morning, and I take her to camp at her school at 9. Which leaves me approximately three and a half hours to have a cup of coffee, cook her an egg for breakfast, and pack her lunch and morning snack. Not for us the rushing-around-the-kitchen-guzzling-a-smoothie-and-dashing-out-the-door-with-a-cereal-bar we're told is the typical American-family morning. (Although most days I'd prefer the extra sleep, thank you.) I've been taking pictures of some of the lunches I've packed for her, if only to keep myself thinking of fun things to include. Up top are a few of them so far. You can check out the Flickr set here for details about what's in these lunches. Nothing fancy, for the most part, and she's liked pretty much everything I've sent with her (carrots tend to come back home).

The main box is an air-tight .9-quart clip-lid box from the Container Store, which has a convenient moveable divider. It's much better than the other, cheapo bento boxes I've used: the lid is easy to open and close, but it stays sealed and secure. The two little 4-ounce rectangular boxes are also from the Container Store. The lunch bag, seen in the bottom-right corner, is a bento carrier from Laptop Lunchbox; I found out after I ordered this that the cheaper but perfectly fine insulated lunch bags at the grocery store are kept in the cocktail mixers section. I think all of these elements work very well together, and just looking at them empty each morning is often enough inspiration to start coming up with ideas for filling them.

Stay tuned for a post about making piima cultured butter, which is, along with chat, my latest mini-obsession.

Ten Kitchen Things I Like

A set of pictures over on Flickr, which I've been using lately as a sort of comfortable medium between blog (too hard) and Twitter (too easy).