Ripe for the pickin'

Summer is fast approaching and I, for one, am looking forward to the warmer weather, longer days and loads of good, fresh produce. While I enjoy buying and eating all the farmer's markets have to offer, I feel extra guilty when something goes bad and has to be pitched. Lately, we've been fighting the good fight by salvaging what we can of good fruit that is going bad. Recent battles we've won:

Cherries:
I love cherries, absolutely *love* them. And when they finally become reasonably priced I buy them in bulk to make up for all the time when they are outrageously priced and not very good. But we all pick around those cherries that just aren't as firm or tasty looking and by the end of the bag you acquire quite a few of those. My new thing is to cook these cherries (pitted) in the oven with a few apples and make applesauce. Put a few cored/peeled/sliced apples and your unloved cherries in the oven until the apples are soft. Put everything in the blender (you may need to add a bit of juice or water) and go to town.

Bananas:

This is a year-round battle, but I must say bananas do some of their finest work in a piece of banana-nut bread. Let them go brown and use them to flavor your next batch of muffins or bread.

Watermelon:

We bought a watermelon, cubed it up and ate some with our dinner. Then we ate some more the next day and the next. Our desire to eat watermelon was quickly waning and we still had half of the melon sitting in the fridge. One blender, a sieve and 15 minutes later we had a healthy amount of agua de sandía. Drink it plain or stir it up in a cocktail - how refreshing.

Cucumbers:

My foray into pickling starts here. I have been threatening for several weeks now to "take up pickling" and I finally took the plunge. I procured several small cucumbers from the Soulard Farmer's Market this weekend and - using a recipe from the Soulard Farmer's Market cookbook - made some dill pickles. I won't be able to tell you for 3 months how they turned out, but that should be right around the time of my next blog entry.