Cherry Pitting

Last weekend Aunt Tammy brought us back some cherries from Door County. Beautiful, bright red, tart cherries. Perfect for fresh cherry pie... except for one thing: the pits. So I called Matt's mom, the cook, to see if she had a cherry pitter. "No," she said. "I found that you fingernail orks just as well, or a pointy end of a spoon." Well, using my fingers sounded very messy (I had tried that with Bing cherries), and I didn't have a spoon with a narrow pointy handle. But as I was digging through my silverware drawer, I found my Pampered Chef orange pealer (I've only gotten orange pealers from Pampered Chef, so others might be the same way, I don't know) which on the opposite end from the orange pealer side had the perfect end for digging out cherry pits. Perfect. It really was quite easy with the right tool. Note: this works well for tart cherries, not with bing cherries which have a larger pit (I tried). Before the kids woke up from their nap I had 8 cups of cherries pitted. Enough for two pies. So I made two, baked one and froze the other. Yummy!