Flathead Cherries

We spent this past weekend up in the Flathead at Erik's folks place. Its a great place to spend time in the summer. Besides the obviousness of hanging with family, there's all the wonderful things that being at the lake has to offer as well. We get to see the pretty view. We get to swim, if its warm enough, and play on the boat with the innertubes. (Sorry, no pictures this time). We get to sail, although we didn't do that this weekend, it was pretty short and the weather on Saturday was iffy until late afternoon. We get to help with the work and enjoy the spoils of Erik's folks wonderfully huge garden. This time I brought home fresh lettuce, zucchini, green beans, fresh dill and cilantro. Erik's mom is a super cook and does a lot of canning of all the wonderful goodies that they harvest. She sent us home with a jar of cherry marmalade and some elderberry jelly that she made of the elderberry's she and Lindsay picked on our camping weekend up at Diamond Lake. Yum!!

Before she could make yummy orange marmalade, though, the cherry's had to lose their pits. Now, cherry's are big business in the Flathead valley--there are orchards everywhere and there are many that are pick your own not to mention all the road side cherry sellers. So, Erik's folks had like 100 lbs of cherrys or something like that. That's a lot of cherry's! And even though they are soooo good just plain, you can only eat so many cherries. And pitting cherries can be time-consuming when done by hand so Erik's mom invested in a pitter not too long ago and that it what we used to pit a bunch of cherries.

Lindsay really enjoyed pitting cherries.

It was kind of a messy job.

Cherries with their pits.

What Kera did while we pitted.

Kera's new dress: a pillowcase turned into a sundress. The pillowcase use to be Erik's sisters!

Pitting

Lindsay consulting with Grandma on the cherries (now pitted) for the cherry pie.

Cherry pie filling!

All the lovely cherries without their pits.

Yum!! Now we're talking about doing some huckleberry picking, so hopefully I'll have pictures of that to share with you too.