Cherry

Many people have a romantic picture in their mind of 'eating with the season', becoming one with nature, planting your food and watching it grow. Well, I am here to tell you that idyllic picture you have in your head is quickly destroyed after month upon month of potatoes, cabbage and pickled vegetables during the bitter cold of winter.  But, I must also tell you that is what makes the first cherries of the season taste that much sweeter. I honestly believe that the fruit I have eaten for the past couple of weeks will be the stuff I daydream about in the middle of February, something colorful, long-gone from my plate.

There is very little I love more about Moldova than being able to go out into the garden after work and picking a bowl full of fresh strawberries.I am lucky enough to live with a really wonderful host mom who happens to have a huge garden. It is well stocked with big cherry, apple, apricot and nut trees, rows of strawberries, raspberries, tomatoes, dill, parsley, green onion, cucumber, and grapes. Currently we are enjoying the cherry tree, it's branches dipping low weighted down by the cherries, and the best strawberries I have ever eaten. 

I was brought up with the understanding that fruits, berries in particular, are expensive. It was a true treat to have berries of any kind and they came in tiny cartons, and were coveted. So, I am used to eating these expensive fruits maybe once a week in the summer, and a few times in the winter. My stomach just isn't used to playing on the Moldovan level of fruit consumption. Because most Americans don't have their own fruit and vegetable gardens we value fruits and vegetables in a different way than Moldovans. In Moldova, if it grows in your garden it is fair game. The seasons don't last long so when they are around you gouge yourself with the stuff.

A couple of nights ago host mom handed me a bag and asked me to go get some cherries. I was excited for this task. So, I stood beneath the big tree, tugging on the branches to reach the higher cherries and quickly filled my shopping bag. I proudly trotted back into the summer kitchen where host mom had finished cooking dinner and we sat down to our bowls of boiled potatoes and bag of cherries. She seemed pleased with my quantity of cherries, and I thought to myself, this is great, we won't need to pick more for at least another couple of days. Little did I know, host mom insisted that we finish of the entire bag of cherries at the table that night. Now, I love fruit, especially after a seemingly endless winter of gray, beige and white, but this was to the extreme. I told myself that I hadn't taken enough of an advantage of the fruit season last year, and that this year I would eat myself sick before I would refuse these beautiful morsels of sunshine. So eat myself sick is exactly what I did that night. After a giant bag of cherries was consumed by host mom and myself I had a pretty excellent stomach, did I care, nope, was I going to do it again the next night, absolutely! Fruit season comes but once a year, for these fleeting moments I will happily gorge on all the fruit I can get my hands on. I will adopt the Moldovan view on fresh fruits and eat them like they are going out of style, because well, they are!

Cheers to the cherries, Friends!