I have a confession.  Often I am very smart with my internet time, but occasionally I get suckered into those ridiculous BuzzFeed quizzes. You know the kind: “Can We Guess Your Eye Color Based On Your Favorite Pizza Toppings?”, or “Tell Us Your Top Passwords and We’ll Reveal Your Favorite Bank Account Information!”  

Normally I just scroll past them, but sometimes they hook me.  The gateway drugs are the “How Many of These Two Thousand Famous Novels Have You Read” sort, because they allow me to revisit my favorite books, and also to feel superior to the 67% of Respondents Who Scored Lower Than Me. 

But the problem with the internet is that now they KNOW me.  The other day a quiz showed up in my feed entitled “Tell Us Your Favorite Desserts and We’ll Tell You Which Strong Female Literary Character You Are.”  COME ON.  Books AND snacks?  I AM ONLY HUMAN, PEOPLE.

I took the quiz, knowing it was bunk, but still hoping for Elizabeth Bennett or Hermione Granger or even Miss Havisham (it’s a short road, y’all).  Instead I got a character from some fantasy novel I’d never even heard of.  Maybe she’s great, and maybe I should read it, but that is not the point of a BuzzFeed quiz.  I do not need something that thinks Cookie Butter is a dessert to make me feel poorly read.  So I did the only thing one could do in such a situation. 

I took another quiz.

I know, I know, but I couldn’t leave on that note!  (This is why I don’t go to casinos.)  I scrolled a bit further, looking for one that seemed reasonable, and then, there it was: 

“Tell Us Your Ideal Date and We’ll Tell You Which Male Literary Character You Should Go Out With.” 

I didn’t need the quiz. I already knew the answer. 

I was sure I was gonna get Tom Sawyer.

Now, I’m not saying I WANTED to get Tom Sawyer.  Gross.  For starters, he’s a kid.  He’s also kind of a jerk, not just a little bit racist, and Becky Thatcher could totally whoop my behind. 

As it turned out, I didn’t get Tom Sawyer, I got Gilbert Blythe (swoooooooon) but that was only because the choices were all wrong for me.  BuzzFeed’s ideal date options were things like “A Moonlit Stroll on a Beach” or “He Asks You to Dinner and a Movie.”  There was no option for “He Takes His Ill-Gotten Marbles and Gets the Hell Out of the Way So You Can Get On With Whitewashing This Fence Already.” 

THAT’S the date I’d be totally down for.

Here’s the thing…I LOVE chores.  Not the kind that actually NEED to get done on a regular basis, like making the bed or emptying the dishwasher.  But anything old-timey and more difficult than it probably needs to be?  I’m your girl.  Do you need some water pumped?  On it.  Anything need hand-cranking?  Here I come!  And if I saw Tom Sawyer at work, I wouldn’t just offer him an apple and ask to take a turn.  I’d make him a homemade strudel with fresh whipped cream and then shove him the heck out of the way in my haste to get at that paint.  Unnecessary chores are one of my most favorite hobbies.

Now as you may recall, I’m fond of combining my hobbies with food, which is why any sort of U-Pick situation is a win-win for me.  CHORES! AND! SNACKS!  So imagine my delight when I found out my friends Julie Ann and Scott had a cherry tree, and that they would allow me to pick as many cherries as I wanted!

Now, I know some folks would say it’s easier to just buy the cherries, and their arguments are as follows :

1. Cherry season in Minnesota typically happens to fall on the hottest and most humid week of the year, which means you spend a full day covered in sunscreen, bug spray, and sweat.

2. Cherries have pits.  So you have to pit them.  One at a time. FOR HOURS. 

3. Even if you have an exciting spring-action cherry pitter that you can screw right to the top of a mason jar (surprise: I do), you will not catch every pit, which means you run the risk of cracking a molar with every piece of pie.  It’s like getting the prize in the Christmas pudding, but instead of a gold ring you get a hard seed and a piece of your own tooth.

4. Every time you pit a cherry (which for 4 gallons is roughly 1706 times) juice splatters onto your face, your chest, your hair, your table, your floor and your feet.  So you can add sticky red juice to the sunscreen, bug spray, and sweat combination.

5. Try as you might you will never get all the juice cleaned up and you will soon have an extended family of fruit flies hosting a reunion in your house.

6. If you are getting free backyard cherries, you are probably also getting organic cherries.  This is amazing and means they would cost approximately ONE BILLION DOLLARS if you were to purchase them at an orchard.  But it also means there will be worms and you will have to check each cherry for little wriggling white larvae and their attendant trails of poo.

7. Cherries will not wait for you.  Once you pit them they start to rot immediately, especially if it is 92 degrees in your kitchen.  So even though you are tired and sweaty and smelly and sticky and your back hurts like a son-of-a-gun from leaning over the pitter all day, you now have to process them.  Freezing is fairly simple, but canning puts you over a vat of boiling water, and drying means having your oven on in your 92 degree kitchen for 8-10 hours.  Did I mention the sweat?

8. The juice will stain your nails, and no matter how much you scrub (“Out, out, damned juice!”) by the next day they will have turned black; a black that is somehow oddly reactivated by every shower.  So for at least 4 or 5 days you will look like an Actual Zombie.

All those points are valid.  BUT…it’s also really, really fun.

To be fair, once a year is plenty for me.  As Mark Twain said: “If Tom had been a great and wise philosopher (like the writer of this book) he would have now comprehended that Work consists of whatever a body is obliged to do, and Play consists of whatever a body is not obliged to do.” If I had to pick and process cherries all day, every day, I’m sure I’d hate it, and it makes me give a lot of thought to the folks who pick our food for a living. 

But I am not obliged, except in that I’m much obliged to Julie Ann and Scott for letting me near their tree (because I’m sure they know there’s probably not one boy in a thousand that can do it just right.)  And while they don’t ask for anything in return, they totally deserve it.  So lacking an apple, or a marble, or dead rat with a string to swing it on (I REALLY don’t want to date Tom Sawyer) I once threw them a Cherry Party in my side yard.  Which is another win-win, because throwing a party is my number one favorite chore of all time.

HERE IS HOW YOU DO IT.

1. Cherry-Themed Table Setting

2. Cherry-Themed Party Favors

3. Cherry Menu. (Pickled Cherries with Cheese and Crackers, Tart Cherry Spritzers, Kale and Walnut Salad with Dried Cherry Vinaigrette, Sautéed Chicken Breasts with Thyme and Sour Cherry Butter Sauce, and of course Cherry Pie, because what are you, a filthy Communist?)

Pro Tip: Do not google “Cherry Party” for inspiration.  In slang it means something VERY different than this, and those are not the sorts of BuzzFeed quizzes you want to be getting in your feed.

Because of Covid, there could be no cherry party this summer.  All they got this year was Jerry’s Favorite Cherry Cake, a whole lot of gratitude, and this silly dissertation. 

(“Jerry’s Favorite Cherry Cake” is an amazing recipe, btw.  I got it out of a thrift store Door County cookbook, from whence I also got Cherry Cornmeal Waffles and Cherry Cheesecake Ice Cream.  I don’t know who Jerry is, but his taste in cake is impeccable.)

Now I’m off to try to hull the bag of buckwheat my Uncle Lester sent me.  The internet tells me that really the only way to do it is to back over it with your car and then carefully pick out the hulls and the asphalt.  Chores!!!  

But if anybody has some raspberries that need picking, or some seed corn that needs shucking, or some clothes that need washing on a washboard in a creek by a Conestoga wagon, you know who to call.  I’ll be there with bells on, and you’ll probably get a cake out of the deal.  Especially if you’re Gilbert Blythe…