Another Italian adventure thanks to our friend Giorgio. Yesterday Giorgio took Kevin and I to get cherries from his friend Mario's cherry trees. It was just this guys house, with two trees, but he and his wife could never eat all the cherries, so they told Giorgio to come pick them. Giorgio is 70 years old, so he took Kevin and I to get on the ladder...and as thanks, we got half of what we picked. I'm pretty sure we got about 20 pounds of cherries, and then we split them in half, so Kevin and I got about 10 pounds!
Here are some photos of the picking at Mario's house.
Kevin up the ladder while Giorgio gets the lower ones. Mario makes his own honey too, those colorful boxes are bee hives...I'm hoping we will get some in September! (I'm told that's when the honey is good...who knew)
The view of the valley from Mario's house.
Look at all those cherries!! This is about half of what we got!!
Still hard at work.
This is on the opposite side of Mario's property. This is not his land, but it's just so amazingly Italian we had to take a picture of it.
There was no way we could eat all those cherries without getting sick, so I decided I would make cherry preserves. I've never actually done that, so I just googled it and went for it. Turns out it's really easy! The worst part was pitting the cherries, and that's only because I couldn't find a cherry pitter here. I got five 16oz jars of preserves, and we still have half the bucket full of cherries!! The preserves are still cooling, so I haven't tasked it yet, but straight out of the pot it was great! Here's the process...
Here's the bucket we started with.
Then I had to pit them all. I couldn't find a cherry pitter, so I just had to cut them all in half and pull the pit out...as you can see, it was a very messy process.
Then I had to boil and steralize all the jars and lids and put the preserves in. I make two batches and I still have half a bucket of cherries. I think I'm going to have to take them into work and give them away, or else they are going to go bad!
Another great Italian moment...thanks to Giorgio!
