Tag Archives: U-Pick

U-Pick Corn

On Tuesday afternoon we hopped in the car and drove a few miles north of us and stopped at this farm to pick corn. U-pick 4 for a $1. Part of the sign looks like it washed off but we got the gist of what they wanted us to know.

We found 4 ears we thought looked good and put our $1.00 in the metal box and headed back home.

There’s a story behind me having to take a photo of the photo of me at the corn field. Dear mistakenly took a video of me instead of a photo and my computer wouldn’t let me make it into a photo and I couldn’t upload the video, either. Hmmm.

We cooked 2 ears of corn as soon as we got home and boy was it good and sweet. I called it dessert, delicious. We’ll remember this farm next year and enjoy fresh corn again.

Quote of the day from Sprugeon:

“The way to do a great deal, is to keep on doing a little. The way to do nothing at all is to be continually resolving that you will do everything.”

Encouragement of the day:

If you are finding it hard to get started on a task, try setting a timer for 15 minutes and tell yourself to get after that task for at least 15 minutes. You’ll be surprised all you can get done in that short amount of time and maybe it will be enough motivation to continue.

Have a great 9-19-19!

Cherry Varenya ~ Russian Tea Sweetener

The Russian immigrants I grew up around would make and enjoy this Cherry Syrup made with whole pie cherries in their hot tea. They used this syrup in place of sugar to sweeten their tea. I called my mother this week to get the following recipe from her to share for The-Sweet-and-Savory-of-Yummy.

This is a very simple recipe for Cherry Varenya. This is a syrup made with Cherries to sweeten hot tea with.

Cherry Varenya

1/2 Cup Water
1 Cup Sugar
1 Cup Whole Sour Cherries (Pie Cherries)
1 Tablespoon fresh lemon juice

You would increase the proportions of this recipe according to how many cherries you have on hand that you want to make into Varenya.

Boil the water and sugar to make a clear simple syrup. When the liquid is clear add your cherries and let it boil for 10 to 20 minutes (depending on how hard the cherries were to begin with) At the end of the boiling add 1 Tablespoon of fresh lemon juice to help preserve the brightness of the syrup.

You may want to can it at this point. (I don’t know how to can anything so you are on your own here!) 🙂

You can do this process with sliced lemons, too, to make a Lemon Varenya.

Lemon Varenya

When I was young our family would go to a Cherry Orchard somewhere near Lancaster, California in July when the pie cherries were ready to harvest. It might have been in the Leona Valley. We would pick cherries all day and take home upwards of 40 pounds of cherries. That’s a lot of Varenya. When we picked this much my parents would give about half of the cherries away to other relatives and friends who couldn’t make the trek out to the Cherry Farm. Then it was a full day of preparing the cherries for Varenya. Washing, cooking and canning.