Having recently returned from an excellent road trip to Michigan’s lower peninsula, I have to say that the state does right by it’s motto : Great Lakes - Great Times. Also have to give a serious shout out to the cherry, a vastly undersung fruit. Traverse City, in addition to being an amazing lakeside summer town, is arguably the epicenter of world cherry farming. We were there at peak season and let me say: Hole. E. Sheet. The cherries were out of this world…sweet cherries, semi-sweets, sours for cooking….all of them had robust and complex flavors that are hard to imagine if you’ve never had them fresh off the tree.

I guess the same can be said for any fruit, but we were definitely blown away by the sheer cherry awesomeness. If you’ve never slurped the juice that collects at the bottom of the bowl you’re using for pitting cherries, you haven’t lived. We muled about 10lbs home; most are frozen awaiting future diabolical cherry plans, but some yielded an amazing cherry/balsamic reduction for a grilled pork loin. Is there no end to the cherry’s excellence?!?

True indeed.

Yellow Sweets

Mixed sweets pickin’ pail

Fresh cherry pie!

Also of note; they show appropriate reverence for the jerky in Michigan. I’m having all of my mail forwarded here immediately.