Sour Cherry Preserves

Making jam from scratch is never something I imagined myself doing, but recently I happened upon an amazing blog, called Tigress in a Jam and now I am obessed with trying to make jam at home. My best friend has three amazing cherry trees in her yard, but she told me that they tasted awful and thought they were inedible and probably just for the birds. So when I saw a post from the Tigress on sour cherries, I began to wonder if my friend had sour cherries. The blog had a few recipes to try with sour cherries, so I asked my friend if I could stop by and pick some cherries. I am SO glad we did! I happen to love sour food. When people are running and screaming for water after eating a particularly sour food, I tend to taste that food and grin in appreciation.

I brought home loads of cherries, but the season for them had just barely passed, and I had to sort through many that had burst open. Still, with the amount that was in good shape, I made the most amazing cherry pie (another first for me) and amazing preserves courtesy of this blog post's recipe. I was surprised at how easy it was to make...well, it was after I sorted, washed, and removed the stems and pits. I ended up with just a small amount less cherries than the recipe called for, so I cut down some of the sugar and the lemon juice and decided that I would keep my jam in the fridge for safety's sake. I've heard that jam making is easy, and now that I've done it, I just can't stop myself! The best part is that if the jam doesn't jell properly, the end product is a delightful syrup that can be used on ice cream, yogurt, pancakes, and all sorts of good food! All you do is add the ingredients to a pot on low heat, dissolve the sugar, then raise the heat a tad, stir, and wait till it's ready. Easy!

See that foam? You just heat the fruit in the pot, and the juice releases along with air bubbles.
The foam can be skimmed off easily with a spoon.

Ice Cream Floats: 50/50 Shakes

Mmm, it looks so yummy!

When I think of summer, I think of one of my favorite treats that my Mom used to make: 50/50 shakes. Basically, if you know how to make a root beer float, you can make a 50/50 shake. The only difference is instead of root beer, you use orange flavored cola. However, I do not recommend Fanta for this. For some reason, it tastes like Kool-aid mixed with sparkling water added to vanilla ice cream. But if you use a rich orange flavored soda, like Crush (which of course ended up getting REM's song stuck in my head) you end up with a shake that tastes like a Dreamsicle, or a 50/50 bar, in drink form. They called them 50/50 bars because they were 50% orange flavored and 50% vanilla ice cream.

We all got to have shakes.

Get the kids out for this, set out your tub of vanilla ice cream, open some orange soda, and get out some tall drinking glasses. Fill the glasses halfway with soda, and add two scoops of ice cream, gently, on top. Make it fun by adding some straws. Make it fancy with an orange peel curl for garnish. Just make it! Heck, it would even be good with some dark chocolate grated on top of the ice cream or garnished with a strawberry, sliced nearly in half. Of course, if you're like me, there is never a bad time to add a little drink umbrella to a drink. Sit back and enjoy your new treat!

Adding the soda pop.

Adding the ice cream. It will foam and fizz.