Why it is good to live in a super-hippie place.

I was walking along Magazine Street the other day, here in the People's Republic of Cambridge, and I saw a sign on a telephone pole advertising free sour cherries from the tree in someone's backyard, BYOC (bring your own container). I called the number provided to ask if we needed to make an appointment but got no response. Today, I brought a plastic bag with me on my walk toward Andy's lab today and knocked on the door... no answer. But the gate was propped open. So I went into the backyard, only to see a tree whose lower limbs had clearly already been stripped by prior fruit seekers. The tree's upper limbs, however, were replete with cherries.

So I climbed it. I wasn't sure whether it would be better to have someone come home and offer me a stepstool or ladder or to be left alone because jeez, how embarrassing to be caught in someone else's tree stuffing a plastic bag with sour cherries. Naturally, tonight the owner of the house called me back and left a message saying that I could come by even if she wasn't home, and she'd helpfully set out a ladder in the backyard so I could reach the cherries. Too late, lady.



In any case, I made a sort of pie filling using turbinado sugar, lemon, and thyme, as well as about a tablespoon of butter. I filled some corn muffins with it; it's a nice pairing. There's about half a cup of leftover quasi-jam. I guess I'll have to find something to do with it. On the up side, though, I finished off that sour cream!



Speaking of finishing off... in setting up sourdough bread today, I finished off the sourdough starter. That's right, since there was about a cup and a half of the stuff to begin with, doubling the sourdough recipe I settled on (I want to freeze some dough for later) emptied it out. R.I.P., starter. Hopefully, you were full of enough little beasties to make this bread successful. We'll see what happens after the all-night fridge rise. I had to add a significant amount of flour post-autolyse, which makes me nervous, so we'll see...

Dinner was a simple affair: bok choy and edamame "salad" with scallion rice. Tomorrow, I'll get off this Asian kick with something a little more New American.



In other news, I'm reading Too Loud a Solitude, and it's truly awesome. The only drawback is that it is too short.