... came home with 60 pounds! Mostly sweet (and I'll share them at work). Also picked a bundle of sour cherries.

(I really like picking cherries; it's so pleasantly mindless.)

So - the sour cherries are destined for pie, and I plan on freezing them. I had a recipe book that recommended 4 cups as being the right quantity for a pie, but when I put them into a freezer bag it just looked kind of skimpy.

How many cups of cherries do you think make for a nice pie?

And has anyone out there tried to make cherry jam/preserves? Was it easy or hard?

I usually fill up a pie tin and then freeze them.

Ditto- I have the 'sucky bag' machine that I use ALOT..

LOL, how long did it take to pick 60 pounds of cherries? Do you have to climb up into the trees to do it?

When I make pies I let the pie pan dictate the amount used. And since I like a LOT of fruit in the pie, it is usually 6 to 8 cups. Depending on how much fruit I have also will dictate which pie plate I will use. Since it is just my husband & I now, I have several 6 inch pie plates that make the perfect size for 2 people. But if we have a large group I use m deep dish pie plates.

We had a "Queen Anne" cherry tree growing up, my mother made 2 attempts to make cherry jam/preserves and neither time did it come out right, but it was great ice cream topping. My mother made the best cream pies, but when it came to working with cherries, there was just something that always went wrong for her. So she gave up and the trees were removed before I was old enough to try.

It sounds wonderful, I wish you the best, because fresh cherries are the best!

Oh cherry picking....sounds like so much fun!!! But don't you have to pit them before freezing??? I have no clue as no cherry trees here. :(

Fruit tends to cook down, so you need at least double of the "finished" volume.

As for jam, if you do freezer jam it's not that hard...pretty much crush, stir with sugar + pectin, let sit, pour into jars.

Cooked jam is pretty much the same, but less pectin, cook, pour into sterilized jars, then wait for the lids to suck themselves down.

we used to pick cherries on the 3rd hole of the golf course we frequented. the cherries were a bit drippy by the time we finished the round :)

Cherry jam/preserves are easy to make and taste oh so wonderful at your holiday table in the middle of winter. Yummy!!

I 'm coming over for pie ! Fabric or cherry pie .. that would be a tough choice.

WOW thats a bunch of cherries And ya said they made it home Amazing :-) I have a eating disorder at those u-pic places my baskets seem to stay pretty much empty

With three of us picking, it took under 2 hours to fill our three LARGE buckets. The sweet cherries went faster, because they are larger and firmer. The sour cherries were smaller, softer, and juicier so at one point DD and I looked at our bucket and wondered if the quantity in there was somehow shrinking!

Yes you do have to pit them before freezing. The sweet cherries have flesh that adheres to the pits so they are much harder to pit. This is the first year that our timing was right to pick sour cherries too, and those are surprisingly MUCH easier to pit. I poked 'em with the blunt handle of a seafood fork and the pits pop right out. Very easy indeed!

Ever tried brandied cherries? :)

Wow! That's a lot of cherries. Send some my way. :)

No but they sound GOOD!

fill a few quart jars with nice red ripe cherries (without seeds); put a bunch of sugar over them and fill the jars with brandy.

Let sit for 6 months at earliest; leave it for 18 months (the next holiday season) and you're beginning to talk smooth and velvety... :twisted:

Oh my mouth is watering,HUMMMMM

Does it have to be any particular kind of brandy?