35 Years In the Making

 

As I blogged about earlier, I've tried raising sour cherries for about 25 years now after extricating myself from 10 years of living in apartment buildings, but haven't lived in a spot long enough to allow the trees to get mature enough to produce enough fruit to make a sour cherry pie, my personal favorite. Sure I've had plenty of sour cherry crisps or tarts over the years but they have only been tastes and not quite the same a pie full of the fruit.

So I was excited when a couple weeks ago I was able to pick enough fruit to actually make a regulation sized sour cherry pie. My eldest daughter pitted the fruit, my wife marinated it in some sugar to take a bit of the tartness from the fruit and I made the crust from scratch. My wife rolled out the bottom crust and poured in the fruit and I gave my eldest daughter a lesson on how to do a lattice which she completed and sprinkled some more sugar on for texture and into the oven it went.

Above is the completed pie which we started eating the very next day, the day before Father's day, and the day when I am usually presented with a small sour cherry tart or crisp for a taste with our traditional Father's day meal. As I write this, hours before the actual Father's Day begins, I'm guessing the rest of it will be polished off tomorrow. Both of my daughters love sour cherry pies as well. My wife and mother-in-law, fortunately don't care for the tartness so it leaves more for the three of us.