Evans Cherries

Colin Monner

Hello,

We hope this finds you full of family and feasting during this festive season. Much like yourself we have endured extreme cold over the last few weeks, outdoor productivity has wained. Despite the cold conditions ranchers were still out feeding and giving extra straw bedding for their animals, chopping holes into frozen ice, keeping equipment warm and operational. We love our Alberta Beef and want to say thank you to the ranchers for all of their hard work!

While we were cooped up in the house we took advantage of the time and did some things we’ve been wanting to do for a long time. Our home in the community of Auburn Bay in south Calgary was very special to us, and in the backyard was a Honey Crisp Apple Tree and a magnificent Evans Cherry tree.

Year after year we have picked cherries, cleaned, pitted, and froze them in ziplock bags. I knew what I wanted to do with these cherries but never had the time, and the quantity of cherries grew! Fast-forward a few years and our mass of cherries it was getting to the point where I was considering making wine!

With the extremely cold weather and holidays upon us we bit it off and broke out the cherries! My extremely patient mother guided my first attempts to make Jelly, Tarts, and of course Booze. First we made two different recipes for Sour Cherry Jelly and they both taste incredible! Alas our Jelly is more of a syrup, as it did not set very well, maybe more pectin?? Let the learning lessons begin!!

It was fun and certainly worth the effort! Sweet and tart in flavour it is a real treat!

Next we made Sour Cherry Tarts using the frozen Evans cherries along with the freshly made syrup as a base, they did not disappoint if I do say so myself! Following the tarts was a Crisp for desert using a random recipe off the internet. Crazy how many recipes can be found online! It paired well with Vanilla Ice Cream, but what does not pair well with Vanilla Ice Cream!?!

Our tarts were a hit over the holidays!

The last item was booze, or more appropriately called a “Liqueur” of our Evans Cherries. Again after scanning the internet for a recipe we found one with lots of stars and seemed fairly straight forward. Long story short Vodka, Sugar, and Cherries make liqueur along with a bit of time to blend. We have not tried it yet, still sitting in jars for a few more weeks.

Crossing our fingers that we found a good recipe, time will tell!

This was the first year I had the opportunity to gift and share home-made anything to anyone. It was really nice to hang with my mom in the kitchen and learn a thing or two 😉 It’s hard to take time off when there is so much in the campground to do, but the holidays and cold weather offered a great chance to try these things out.

Have we started a little tradition? I hope so. Will there be more pickling and canning and booze making in my future? You know it!!!

We will add some additional photos of our Evans Cherry picking over the years on our social media channels 🙂

We were very fortunate to have planted such a beautiful tree in our backyard. Every year my girls and I would pick the cherries filling bowls to be cleaned and pitted.
Dust, bugs, bird poop and everything in between gets washed down the drain leaving incredibly clean cherries, now onto the pitting!

 

We hope this finds you well this new year. Take are everyone!

 

Share this post

Questions?

Contact us!

Have a Question?

We're ready to help!

Have a question? Call us or complete our contact form to get started.