Last evening, my husband and I went for a walk. Along the way, an elderly neighbor asked for help picking cherries from his tree. Long story short, we ended up with over a gallon of cherries and I had the opportunity to figure out what to do with them.

It gave me a taste of what seasonal living is really like. I grew up having everything available year round at supermarkets.

I often wonder about what life was like before modern conveniences. What did people do?

Well, when your neighbor's cherries are overripe after a series of rainstorms, they ask for help and share their cherries.

I knew at some level that people didn't just eat them ALL. I knew about preserves and jams. Knowing is different than having a bounty of overripe produce.

I turned to ChatGPT for tailored help. I often use ChatGPT when I've got ingredients lying around and want to make something. I'll tell it, "I have this, this, and this ingredient, help me come up with recipe idea for [blank]." This came in handy recently when I visited family and wanted to make a gluten-free recipe for my cousin.

In this case, I prompted, "I have about a gallon of cherries, what can I do?" And I got a list back of different options and ideas.

I ended up making cherry preserve, cherry cobbler, and some French egg custard thing I struggle to remember the name of. I sorted the overripe from the okay-ish ripe and also have a big box of cherries left.

I'm coming to realize more and more that our modern technology can be a bridge to the past. I'm three generations into modern convenience and nobody taught me any of this. But standing in my kitchen with a gallon of cherries and a ChatGPT conversation open, I figured it out.

I would do some things differently next time: my first cobbler attempt didn't have enough crust, my attempt at fermentation failed, and I might cook the preserves longer. And that's exactly the best way to learn.

Covered in cherry stains,

Rachel