Pie, Pudding and Jam

I think I can safely say these are three things most people like. And at $.99 a pound how can you not? Last Thursday, on our weekly gathering, Kitkat presented me with a gift of 11 pounds of cherries. The previous week he had mentioned he found the little red treasures on Spadina for the aforementioned bargain price and asked him to pick me some up.

Faced with a mountain of pitting, I dug out my trusty olive/cherry pitter and set to work. 11 pounds later I am pretty sure I ended up with repetitive stress disorder as I was no longer able to work the little kitchen gadget. Still, I was better of than I was in days gone by when I had no pitter and had to cut out each stone. While I still get the occasional spray of juice, at least my hands don’t look like I spent the day in the abattoir.

I now have pre-measured, and frozen, enough cherries for 3 pies. I also made a batch of jam which only yielded 6 jars. I thought I’d cut more from 10 cups of fruit and six cups of sugar, but apparently not. Oh well. If I can find them for that price again next year I will just double up. Mind you I am still working on last years plum jam so these might be around a while.

There are about ½ a pound left for me to take to work this week to snack on, but the last pound was put to good use indeed. For my birthday, Papi gave me Mrs. Beeton’s cookbook for cakes and puddings. Sure enough, cherry pudding was in there and although it was made in a fashion new to me, CJ and IronMan assured me it was good.

Rather than a crumble or biscuit top, you make what amounts to a milk pudding and then fold in fluffy egg-whites. It is meringue meets a tea biscuit. I need to work on having the fruit itself set a little more firmly, but Mrs. B. is definitely on the right track.

I was down on Spadina today and you can still find cherries for $.99 a pound, but other places had the price creeping up - $1.49, $1.69 and one was even over $2.00! Outrageous. If I wanted to pay that I could go to Sobeys.