Cherries!

I saw these cherries on sale at the local Farmer's Market, and had my husband buy 14lbs. Crazy, I know, lol. But they looked so good! We decided to eat a few, and can the rest for use this winter. I'm thinking cherry cobbler's and such. So much fun. Only 1 problem...I had no cherry pitter! OMG, what a nightmare. I did about half of them by hand, which made 9 pint jars. It was messy, and tiring, and my forearms and hands ached all night long....my fingers still look like I slaughtered an animal...nice.
For the rest of the cherries, I went to my local outlet mall that has a kitchen store and bought a cherry pitter that does 4 at a time. What a lifesaver! Can't wait to share recipes with these this winter.
This is the 2nd batch in a 2 gallon Ziploc bag.

Jars cleaned, hot and ready to use.

I used a mixture of half juice, half water to bathe the cherries. In the baggie is a lemon juice/water mixture to prevent browning after the pits were removed. Looks like blood. Seriously, for Halloween I know what to do to paint blood on costumes. 

Heat the liquid and cherries to boiling, takes about 5 minutes. Then, fill your hot jars, leaving 1/2in. headspace.

Boil in the canner 15 minutes.

And finished result. There were 3 more jars processing during this photo. So, about 8 lbs for 9 jars? That's a guess.

And the pitter I got today for $15. Already pitted a bowl-full for the kids in under a minute. :) Love it, love it, love it.