Friday, August 15, 2008

Holding On To Summer


My daughter starts high school on Monday, but summer is not over yet. It is not not not. I swear. I know, I know, officially it’s not over ‘til September twenty-something, but the start of school has always marked the unofficial end of summer. Ask any school-aged kid. So just to further reassure myself the fun’s not over, I splurged on nine dollars worth of cherries and let my son talk me into baking a big, deep fruit crisp.

He even helped with pitting all those cherries. Despite the fact that the dining table looked like the site of a bloodbath, I can promise he acquired only one teeny tiny blood blister when the cherry pitter nailed him in the palm. So there was only a little sweat and possibly a few tears (shed internally, of course - we’re tough) that went into this labor of love. But it was worth the effort. Besides, it was nothing like the time we actually went out and picked the cherries right off the trees, and a Japanese beetle flew down my tank top and anchored itself inside my sport bra. That’s another story.

Along with the cherries I added some apricots and a very expensive out-of-season Granny Smith apple, peel and all. The colors were so amazing I had to take a picture.

The end result was brown and bubbly, sweet and tart, crunchy and fragrant. And like summer, it disappeared all too fast.

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