Dude, Where's My Cherry Pitter?

“I know what you’re doing.  You’re going to can fruit,” chirped the clerk at the hardware store.

“Reluctantly,” I replied.

“My lady friend has a sister who cans fruit,” he said, a wide grin splitting his face.  “We get jam for Christmas.  In the summertime, she cans dill pickles.  Delicious.  It’s a lot of hard work.”

What would he know?  Out of all the clerks available in the hardware store, I get stuck with Chatty Cathy.  I dug into my front pocket for my wallet and pictured this man spooning hot fruit goop into sterilized Ball jars.

What did I know about cherries?  I like eating them, but since I’m only familiar with the life span of Bartlett pears, I don’t know when cherry season begins or ends.  It’s never long enough for me, so I get the Bing cherries and eat as many as I can until no one sells them anymore.  Strawberries are easier to find.

“I don’t know how she does it,” he said.

I handed over a $20 bill and saw the light come to his eyes.  He was having one of those Oprah “Aha” moments and was going to tell me something brilliant.

“Oh, she doesn’t work.  She stays home with her kids.”

Wrong this to say around me, Sucka.  I have this crazy left eye which comes in handy when I hear something I don’t care to hear.  He paused when he saw my left eye go into action.  It goes from a light, almost tranquil type of earthy brown to pitch black.

When my left eye goes black, my husband doesn’t come home unless he has a dozen roses for me.  But only if my anger is aimed at him.  Otherwise, I welcome any roses at our home for any reason.

 

One of the reasons why I don’t have kids is because the attitude hasn’t changed in decades.  People think you don’t work when you are home with the kids and running a household.  If you are also working, then it’s called “juggling”.   

What a raw deal.  As the firstborn child, I am grateful to my parents and anyone who has dumped their kids on me.  My experience with children taught me that I didn’t want any of my own.  

 

The clerk looked at me uncomfortably and started backing up from the counter until he felt safe from the stare of my crazy eye.  “Uh.  She has two kids.  I still don’t know how she does it.”

Good enough, I thought.  Just don’t say that again in my presence, Bub.  Or I may stick your head in my cherry pitter and lean all of my weight on it. 

This year, my husband could not stop buying fruit.  Each time he left the house, he came back with a bag of strawberries or cherries.  Last week, I made him take a bag of cherries to work.  They disappeared long before noon, but now, everyone at the workplace thinks he’s a great guy who is kind and generous.

“So, Dude, when are you going to bring more cherries in?”

 I’m sure everyone at his workplace wants to ask him this whenever he shows up.  These days, people love to hear the words discount, but not as much as free.

My former mother-in-law canned fruit all the time, and my mother could do it in her sleep.  Back then, looking at canning jars lined up on a shelf all year round with the colors of different fruits and vegetables provided all kinds of entertainment.  I had to agree with my former mother-in-law.  All that color made those otherwise plain canning jars look attractive.  When you got bored looking at the jars, you could always eat what was in them.  I spent many afternoons with jars of cling peaches suspended in heavy syrup.  I ate jars of dill pickles in the summertime until all of them were gone.

Sometimes, I have this fear of killing people with botulism from my homemade canning.  After you eat my canning products, simply count the hours after that.  Say, if you make it past about 15 hours without calling an ambulance or having someone rush you to the emergency room, you’ll live.

 

Usually, once I hear that metallic “ping!” I can relax and enjoy my canned creations.  I know the satisfaction of canning your own food, but once you get started, you can’t leave everything to do something else.  And I do enjoy my distractions.

I wanted to buy a cherry pitter which would pit one cherry at a time and give me ergonomic relief at the same time.  The only thing I saw while shopping was a cherry pitter which is supposed to pit four cherries at a time.  While searching for the cherry pitter, I could not resist buying a strawberry slicer.  All this time I’ve grown up and lived in California, I never owned these two kitchen items.  Is it because my family thought these were for sissies?  Aren’t you supposed to get pleasure when you pit and slice fruit by hand? 

 

Anyway, I’m going to try using these kitchen gadgets.   If I don’t have the time or the motivation to can, all the fruit will be going into freezer bags until I do.  That’s my way out of the good ole days and good intentions.  With Ziplock bags, you can rule your kitchen and fake it.  Freezers are good for hiding things, and no one but me will ever see that fruit again.