I had an assignment this week–well, that is 3 recipes I needed to work on for the Cherry Board, one of the many food related things I do. Nothing fancy, no fireworks or port flamed cherries, no words, or drawn out poetic connections, not even headnotes. So, in a way, it is that much easier–it’s all about creating something that tastes good and will look good when photographed, and I don’t have to worry about some greater inspiration, a story larger than itself: just cherries, ah how sweet life can be. But alas, amidst my own creative frenzy, I always seem to want to make it more. I comb the markets and various stores for the best and sweetest cherries, not the fancy, Rainiers, but the darker, firm, bright red Bings, native to the North West (and evidently looked upon for their special healing powers by Native Americans when they were first discovered) and with the shortest season. Cherries, right now, are not hard to find, but they are expensive. I research my ideas, look through books, pull out my own latent recipes–a cherry clafouti–a French favorite of cherries baked in a cloud of  airy custard, almost like a cake–could be delicious, a great start, I think, but in the end not something my client wants. Instead they ask for something purely American–an upside down cake with a twist, showcasing fresh cherries and yet including fresh pineapple too, so I make it for them (individual cakes made in muffin tins), and they are happy.

My mind turns to the pineapple upside down cake we used to make at Nepenthe when I was a kid,  and one pictured in an old snapshot from the 70s–my grandmother, heavily leaning over it to blow out the candles (it must have been her birthday month) at one of the astrology parties, a crowd of onlookers surrounding her.  It’s such a great photo and one I use in my book. I found an old recipe from the family kitchen and eagerly made it (with a few adjustments) to pair with the photo, though in the end the publisher decided against including the recipe–too American perhaps, too dated, or it just didn’t work out as so many things did and didn’t for my book. The photo (shown here) is one I took with my photographer–we laughed about it because it was so retro, so exactly as it was (untouched and as it came out of the oven, and we loved it) and as this cake is; for one it is very simple to make, a basic butter cake poured over fruit suspended in caramel, but in this case the fruit is canned pineapple rings with maraschino cherries from a jar. We did this purely for the fun of it, for the remembrance of another time and era, for simplicity sake and not much else–as sometimes its like, ‘why try to rework the wheel?’

Well, I always like to rework the wheel, as I mentioned in an earlier post, it seems to be in my nature, to fuss over the details–my mind works endlessly to quiet those synapses, to refrain from trying to organize all the disparate ideas into neat little lists, like those running down the side of someone’s blog, or website. I’m one who thinks its ok to have many ideas, to act on what draws you in that particular moment though I also know it’s not always the best remedy for success, or at least it can make life harder. After several days of this, I am happy it just comes back to itself, to the bowl of cherries on my tabletop, to simply plucking their stems, popping them in the mouth and being happy that they just are what they are–not cooked, not written about in any way larger than themselves, not a part of a list, not added to a salad or to a drink (2 of the other recipes I’m working on), to a specialized new wave dessert, or to anything else.  They are simply, a bowl of cherries, like my life, sometimes it is and sometimes it isn’t, but either way, I can always strive for it to be. Relishing the season. Eating one cherry at a time.