A Toast to the Sour Cherry.

I believe that we carry in us an intense desire to celebrate the fruits of labour. A toast to work well done.

Specifically for me just now, a desire to rejoice in the in the fruit of our backyard here in Budapest, and different "toast" altogether.

I had been reading in the afternoon sun. My mind suddenly leaned far into a desire for our sour cherry preserves, jarred some weeks ago.

I snapped into action: bread in the toaster and allowed to cool. Popped the kettle on (which, incidentally, boils much more quickly at euro 220v vs. Canadian 110--I keep wishing we could rig this up at home...) and got the teapot ready. Broke open a container of crème fraîche, and spooned on enough to near-obliterate the memory of the bread. I then mounded two spoonfuls of sour cherry.

I had done all of this stealthily, and quickly. Now I just had to stop and hold in my mind's eye this most perfect articulation of milk, of cherry.

I wore a drugged grin for hours after.

Comments

[Lucy]

I am salivating here!

Where we lived in Dorset, there were two wilding cherry trees in the hedges which yielded very good sour cherries; one had dark, small juicy fruit, the other larger and lighter red. It must have been a good year when we lived there, there was a lot for fruit, and the birds didn't seem interested, perhaps they were too sour...

[mare]

Most Canadian kitchens do have a 220 V receptacle that is used for the electrical stove. It has an unwieldy big plug, but it is very well possible to split the wires and make a European style 220 volt receptacle in which European plugs (take your pick; there are many flavours) could be plugged.

Pay a visit to a European hardware store and buy a wall box, a receptacle and a matching face plate. Bring it to Canada with a kettle from the same country and hook it up or have it hooked up in your kitchen.

I did it in our house to give my Dutch audio system a few more years, but officially working on electrical systems by non-electricians is not legal in Québec, and the resulting rig is certainly not to the Québec electrical code...

So you might reconsider.

O, and sour cherries are yummy! But we have wild blueberries for dessert tonight.

[Tori]

Lucy--Oh heaven! what did you do with them?

Mare: don't tempt me! I don't think my house insurance would approve! But is it *ever* nice to have a roaring boil in so little time. This is going on my list of how I'd design paradise.