On the way up North, we might have stopped the car on the side of the road so I could get out a take a few photos of the cherry trees...
Towards the end of the week, my dad, aunt and uncle headed to a U-Pick farm for some cherry goodness. Here's my Uncle RT...
And my Aunt JVL... aren't the strap-on buckets a great idea?
So pretty... and SO yummy!
My dad ended up picking 13 lbs of cherries... so my mom and I got to work making them into yummy treats! First, we rinsed them...
Then it was time to pit them. My parents have this nice pit-er...
And this not as nice pit-er. Also, please note how pretty my mom's nails are- what a great hand model! 
After a while (a LONG WHILE), we had pitted all the cherries... this is what we got:
Yep- that green bowl is full of pits!After the pitting was done, it was time to get to the canning of CHERRY JAM! First, we put the jars on to boil- each one is half filled with water, and there's also water in the pot.
To make the jam, we used my parents' trusty Cuisinart. As I learned, some people (my dad) prefer their jam to be a little junkier...
So I pulsed the cherries in batches, and only very briefly!
According to the recipe, I combined the cherries, sugar (there was a little more than the two cups that this picture shows)...
And lemon juice.
Then, I put it on the stove and stirred until it was a rolling boil. After adding the pectin (again, per the recipe), the jam was ready to can.
But first, you have to scrape off the foam... we got lucky and there was hardly any to scrape!
This stage of the canning is a two person operation at our house, so my mom filled the jars...
While I sealed them them...
And flipped them over. I'm still a novice canner, so I'm not sure exactly why we do this, but after 5 minutes we flip them back up.
Here are the jars just after flipping... if you look in the upper left corner, you'll see we still had some cherries left over (those will come up later).
Miracle of miracles, every jar SEALED! PLEASE NOTE: This is the first time I have been so involved in the canning process, so I was l a little worried that my first time canning would be a bust, so I'm super thrilled!
Yep- we made 18 and a half jars of yummy, homemade cherry jam!
It's pretty in the jars, but even prettier on a slice of bread, displayed on a Fire King Jadite dish!
Mmmm.... delish!
But as I mentioned above, there were still lots of cherries leftover! So, my mom made a pie! She used some extra dough to make these pretty little leaves for the crust.
I just love the look of this!
Unfortunately, I had to catch my plane back to NYC, so I didn't have a chance to see the final product... but it sure looked yummy going INTO the oven!
Phew... that was a lot of photos! I had a blast making the jam- I can't wait to can MORE stuff someday! Thanks for stopping by- have a great Tuesday!
