Monday, 13 July 2009 at 08:11 PM "Why so early?"
Saturday morning Peter was unloading the truck and setting up during a storm. It was pouring. Water collected on top of the tents. Then the tents collapsed — all six of them — brought down by the weight of the water on top of them.
Peter is fine. The tents are mangled. (Lupe says maybe he can fix one of them.)
Eventually, we set up anyway. Another vendor was kind enough to lend us a few tents. The day was going well enough — until it was time to leave and we found that the battery in the van had died.
This was probably my fault.
On Sunday, I woke up at 3.30am, well before my alarm was set to go off. I couldn't go back to sleep. I went into the kitchen, checked my email, had a coffee, and then went to get the truck.
I almost gave Peter a heart attack.
As I was pulling up to the market, he called: "Um.... I just went outside to put some stuff on the truck and it's not there..."
"Yeah, I have the truck. It's OK, Peter. I'm pulling up at the market now."
"You are?! Why so early?"
I gave him a few reasons: It's hard to find parking. I was up already. I dropped the f-bomb a few times. It was too early to be classy.
"Yeah... but why so early?"
Some people get in early to work to impress their bosses. Mine tells me I should have stayed in bed.
Nothing I didn't already know.
Today, I did not wake up before my alarm. Rather, I woke up to my alarm. It was blaring at 4.30am — on my day off.
I couldn't fall back asleep.
I made some coffee and ate half a cherry cobbler.
* * *
I grabbed some sweet cherries Sunday but when I got home, it was the sour cherries I went for first.
We sell buckets of pitted sour cherries, but I'm always a little curious about the retail customers who buy them. Cherry season comes once a year and lasts maybe three weeks. You can't pit some cherries?
I sat at the table and pitted a quart of cherries while the oven came to temperature.
I almost didn't make a cobbler topping at all. Really, I only cared about the filling — the tangy sweetness of the cherries, the bright pink juices turned viscous and ever so slightly chewy from the cornstarch.
But I can't say I was disappointed when the topping came out of the oven, golden brown from the buttermilk wash and the dusting of sugar.
green city market, sour cherries, wicker park market
Reader Comments (5)
I made a coffee cake with some sour cherries this weekend that was awesome. I need to pick up more on Wed.
I've been drowning in cherries lately (a very happy state of affairs!). Just preserved some in red wine last weekend, but I'm dead set on a cobbler this weekend thanks to your inspiration...
Everything sounds so good! I swear I'm going to make a clafouti this weekend. Or I could make it tonite with gooseberries. Will it work with gooseberries?
I need the cobbler recipe and instructions on preserving the cherries in red wine. I love this time of year.
I'll see if I can post the cobbler recipe in the next few days. No promises, though. (It's from Rustic Fruit Desserts: Crumbles, Buckles, Cobblers, Pandowdies, and More.)
Otherwise, there's this one from Gourmet, which looks good. (But different from the Rustic Fruit Desserts recipe, which had buttermilk).
The wine recipe I got from Eugenia Bone's book Well Preserved. She has you heating red wine with sugar, orange zest and cloves, then simmering pitted cherries in the mixture for ten minutes or so, removing the cherries to jars, reducing the wine by half, and then covering the cherries with the reduced wine. If you are putting them up, process the jars for about 20 minutes.