I’ve never been crazy about cherries. It’s not that I don’t like the sweet taste of summer’s favorite fruit. The process of cleaning off the fruit from the pit makes my teeth feel funny, and I’m not a fan of cherry pit spitting.
(Incidentally, I don’t eat a lot of watermelon because of its pesky seeds. I’m even turned off by the small white ones in “seedless” watermelons.)
Lucky for Levi, JB does not share my strange aversion to cherries (although he does have strong feelings about corn), and the two of them have been snacking on them all summer — and making quite a mess. Sticky red fingers are unavoidable when you have to cut your toddler’s cherries in half to remove the pits before serving them.
A cherry pitter
Paper clips?
Have you seen this video demonstrating how to pit cherries with a paper clip? Even as a non-cherry eater, I can appreciate that it’s a cool kitchen hack. Unfortunately, it doesn’t look any less messy than using a knife to split a cherry and extract the pit. Did you see how stained her fingers are at the end?
Maybe we’ll stick to plums, which are significantly less sticky and messy than cherries and, apparently, Levi’s new obsession. The other day he asked if we could call my mom because he needed to tell her three things:
1. He went poopy on the potty that morning.
2 The battery on his iPhone died.
3. He likes plums.
Also, I just really want to try this plum pitting technique:
(top photo via Chris Daniels Photography; videos via Chow)
That cherry video was nuts – you’re right, her fingers were dyed red! It would be so much easier (and probably more sanitary) to use a knife. Luckily, no one in my house is crazy about cherries either, but cutting up fruit for a toddler gets messy nonetheless! I’ll have to try the plum technique though, that looked pretty good.
Glad to hear Levi went poopy in the potty! And that he is proud to share his accomplishments 🙂
I don’t know about you, but I still like to tell people about my accomplishments…in the bathroom 😉
I was making brown butter cherry bars once, and needed to pit a lot of cherries. I looked through the kitchen drawers and ended up using a straw – the hard plastic reusable kind – to push the pits out. My first attempts were quite messy but by the end I was better at it and did not make as much of a mess as the paper clip method. I probably would not do it for just casual snacking, though.
You had me at brown butter cherry bars.
Also, using a hard plastic straw to pit cherries is a great idea!