I spent part of the afternoon pitting cherries, and like trimming the azaleas, which I also did today, it’s a repetitive annual task yielding pleasant rewards over time. In June, I usually buy cherries in bulk at a farmers market and save them for the fall and winter when I’m in the mood for a pie. I also bought a few sweet cherries to add to a salad I made from an assortment of garden lettuce and herbs, yet this time, instead of enlivening the salad like candy, the cherries may not have been sweet enough or maybe they were only savory. Or it might have been that the flavor of the greens had been dulled by the summer heat and the whole salad took on a sandpaper bitterness from the beet greens I added. I toasted a baguette to serve with helpings of pâté, and I made deviled eggs with olive oil and chives. We opened a Rioja reserva (crianza is the least complex or expensive; a reserva is one level above that and must be aged at least three years before it’s sold), and it gave me a surprise — much like the surprise I’d wanted the cherries to give me — when I sipped the wine and tasted something dry, but then a few seconds later a fullness or sweetness emerged.
(Photo: Brookside Gardens, June.)
365 Days of Food 