Picking cherries

I came across a photo the other day that brought back some memories.

It showed our kitchen counter chock-a-block with bowls, pans and Tupperware, each brimming with freshly picked cherries.

Grandma Norma stayed with us for part of the summer several years in a row when the girls were young and during that time, we sort of settled into a routine for the visits. She would always teach them how to do something. One summer, she taught the art of crochet.  A couple of summers, we all made capoletti  together. We’d have a thousand of these little meat-filled dumplings laid out on a beach towel to dry before we froze them for use on special occasions in making caplets.

Don’t know what caplets are? Too bad – go get your own northern Italian mother-in-law. I’m not sharing.

Norma always seemed to show up in time to pick the cherries from the tree in our backyard. She got a big kick out of picking them with her granddaughters. Daughter Two was particularly good at cherry picking, or so I recall.

Grandma made pies and – if I whined loudly enough – streudel from the cherries and whatever else we had in the way of fruit filling. Good stuff.  She was a great baker and all I had to do was eat my share. Or, perhaps a bit more.

I don’t know if a picture is really worth a thousand words but it’s at least worth more than these couple hundred. Because what I can’t put in these words is the taste of those streudels or the pride a little girl gets out of sharing pastry made with her grandma from cherries they picked together.