Ill-Timed Harvest (Bowls of Cherries)

The cherry trees are loaded. The cherry harvest is nearly over, in fact - the cherries are early this year, as is all the fruit. We have been picking cherries off the low-hanging branches of our three cherry trees for a week or so. Today, though, it suddenly occurred to my husband that if we didn't pick the cherries - NOW! TODAY! - they would fall on the ground and be wasted while we are in Oaxaca. 

Waste is a cardinal sin in his moral universe, so he marshaled the troops and drove the Case loader into the orchard. He lifted the girls in the loader up to the higher branches and told them to get picking. Within an hour, they had brought some twenty pounds of cherries into the house. These are Rainiers, beautiful yellow cherries with a pink blush. Rainier are the most highly prized local cherry, commanding a premium at the grocery store. Myself, I actually prefer the black cherries like Bings. I think they have a deeper, more intense flavor. 

No matter how much we enjoy them, however, it's unlikely we will be able to eat twenty pounds of fresh cherries by tomorrow night. I haven't got the time to try and process them. I don't even know how to process fresh cherries, other than by pitting them and submerging them in a jar of 100 proof vodka. So I think we will simply eat as many as we can and send the rest to the compost pile. 

When we planned this trip, I knew we would be missing strawberry season and raspberry season, but I assumed we would be home before the blueberry harvest and certainly before the would blackberries were ripe. Now I don't know - the blueberry U-pick farms are open already and the blackberries are already in the hard green stage. We may miss berry season entirely. 

All the more reason to gorge ourselves on cherries right now. 

What Wrong With this Avocado?

Don't you just love it when you cut open an absolutely perfect avocado? Avocados are always a bit of a gamble - many a good looking fruit turns out to be an ugly grey mess when opened. This one was gorgeous - perfectly ripe, smooth green deliciousness through and through. 

So why was it at the Gleaner's Pantry? Somebody looked at the avocado and decided it wasn't good enough to sell, so it went in the trash. Can you tell what the flaw was?  My best guess is that it's a little curved. It isn't totally symmetrical. What a rediculous requirement! 

Now multiply that avocado by 10. That's how many avocados I brought home today. Not all of them will be perfect, but many of them will be edible. 

And I was only one of thirty or so people at Leaner's today. There were avocados enough for all of us. In fact there were so many avocados that a whole crate of them were left over. 

And that's just one day this week, at one of several organizations devoted to salvaging food, in one small city. The actual number of avocados discarded this week in my town is incalculable. It must number in the thousands. 

Let's not even try to imagine the 

Tomatoes

Bell peppers

Bananas

Oranges

Apples

Onions

Lemons

Limes

Mangoes

Potatoes

Melons

Pomegranates

Plums

Carrots

Jalapeños

Eggplants

Radishes

Cucumbers

Zucchini

Discarded every day! I haven't even started on the mountains of greens. Lettuces of all varieties, kale both curly and flat. Fresh herbs, cabbages, escarole....

Oh my fingers are getting tired

Eggs and milk with a sell-by date of tomorrow

Prepared salads, wraps, sandwiches, deli meat.....

BREAD! OH MY GOD SO MUCH BREAD

cookies pies scones croissants tortillas sliced sandwich bread rye ciabatta organic whole wheat gluten free cornbread cupcakes sheet cakes 

Pasta flour sugar spices

Good lord there's only so much I can take home and eat, people! Help me out here! Start a gleaner's pantry in your own town, for the love of Pete. 

Here's what I did with a very small percentage of the food I got from Gleaner's today. With the exception of store bought pie crusts and milk from my own goats, everything here came from Gleaner's. 

Two quiches and a great big green salad for dinner. One quiche is asparagus and red pepper; the other zucchini and black olive. The salad has avocados, tomatoes, cucumbers, bell peppers, and goat cheese.