Cherry Cheer

It's turning out to be a very busy summer. Weekend aside, I was gone from the house every day last week, and I will be this week too. This is poor planning on my part. It seems I got on an appointment-making binge at some point in time. Yesterday took me for my monthly pedicure...which is always nice...but still. I had lots to do at home, and so I could scarcely afford the time it took. As it turns out, I needed to stop off at the grocery store to pick up a few things for the Sweet Cherry Barbecue Sauce on the day's agenda. It all works out in the end.

The barbecue sauce took about twice as long as expected. I learned while making this last year that when cherries are going to be cooked down, there's no need to pit them. Just remove their stems and then load the cherries, pits and all, into the pot you're going to use to cook them. Add a half cup of water, and then simmer them for 15-20 minutes. Then, allow them to cool, and you can just squeeze the pits out with your fingers. It's less tedious than running them through a cherry pitter individually. The part I didn't remember was the cooling part, which took a while. Then, there was the cooking down of the sauce, but it was all worth it. I ended up with five half-pints of some very yummy Sweet Cherry Barbecue Sauce. (That's a link to the recipe there.)

As long as I was pitting the cherries that way, I simmered more cherries for today's mission to make some Sweet Cherry Chutney. As I've mentioned before, I make chutneys from all sorts of fruits and vegetables. The first chutney I ever made was Blueberry Chutney, and it was love at first taste. But I'm a fickle lover, and so when the Sweet Cherry Chutney came along, it became my new favorite. Nothing has knocked it from its perch since. It's another Food in Jars recipe, and you can find it right here. I'm gonna find it in my kitchen this morning as I cook down the rest of our cherries into some delectable goodness. Pictures to follow. Also today, I'm making two salads for our Fourth of July celebration tomorrow, and so there's plenty to do in the kitchen.

While I was cooking the barbecue sauce, I was also scrambling between timers to get some housework done. The tuxedo cats were calling. Finally, I made it into the sewing room around 3:30 and managed to get all the top-stitching done, except for the green leaves, stems, and the watermelon on July's head. Here's how they look now.

It's a CSA pick-up day, in addition to being a chutney cooking day, and so I'm just hoping to have some time to finish these off. In addition to the thread work, I need to sew on a whole pile of buttons and add an eye to June's bluebird.

With all that going on yesterday, Smitty found it necessary to cool his tummy furs on the wood floor.

He's grown into such a big boy. Do you remember this little bundle of energy?

He covers a lot more floor boards than he used to.

So there's plenty to do again today. Better get moving. I'll probably take the day off from blogging for the Fourth of July tomorrow. I'll be baking cookies and making some taco dip in the morning before we head off for the river. Look for me to be right back here on Thursday morning. I hope you all have a safe and happy Fourth of July.