Cherry Pie and The Paperclip
When it came to cherries, wire cutters may have once saved the day for my grandfather. For me, it was a paperclip.
I had been painstakingly pitting cherries, one by one, for an hour when Doug announced that he wanted to replace our underachieving plum tree with another cherry tree. I stopped pitting and looked at him in horror. We already had four. Two were very young and hadn’t met their full potential. Of the other two, one left us with almost all of the 18 1/2 pounds of cherries that were on the countertop before me.
I voiced my opinion on the matter and invited him to see what it took to pit cherries. After just three, he conceded, “Let’s plant another peach tree instead.” The look of horror faded from my face as one problem had been solved.
The next problem? I was using a handheld cherry pitter. It worked fine, but the repetitive motion of squeezing the device after only one pound of cherries left my hand aching and tired. I needed to find a different method when I remembered a technique that I learned the first time I pitted cherries: the paperclip method.
At first, the idea seemed absurd. A paperclip? Really? As much as I mocked that method, I soon tried it. And…wow! What a disgustingly simple solution. It was so easy and left even more of the cherry intact than that of a pitter.
Pitting cherries is a tedious task, so I’ll most likely try pitters that do multiple cherries at a time. But for now, my favorite “saves the day” method is a simple, paperclip.