Journal: Chokecherries, and Other Perilous Perils

 

Remember my picture of chokecherries from last week?  I posted this same picture on Facebook.  There are now 63 comments under the picture, some with true and some with false information.  I answered some of the questions and comments; on others, I clicked ‘Hide’, as they were not only controversial (and already answered), but really just too stupid for words.

There’s a lady in my Facebook friends list who is often abrasive and annoying.  I leave her there because she is also entertaining – and every once in a while, she is even nice.

The first few questions from various readers were normal:

Question:  What can you do with these berries?

My answer:  I used to make jellies and jams with them.  Haven’t lately, as I haven’t had time.  Meanwhile, the birds think it’s a giant bird feeder!  

Question:  Do you have a recipe to share with us?

My answer:  Sure!  Here’s a good one:  

https://practicalselfreliance.com/chokecherry-jelly-jam/

A friend shared a funny story about how her cousin had bottled some chokecherry juice improperly, and when the stuff fermented, the bottles began exploding.  Aiiiyiiiieee!

It was at this point that the abovementioned woman – let’s call her Sheila (with apologies to all Sheilas who are not this woman) – tried to hijack the conversation.

“Those are elderberry and poisonous if you don’t know it...maybe that’s why they call them chokeberries?”

Another lady responded, “Cherries, not berries!” which only served to add a little fuel to the impending fire.

If people know things, can’t they please be troubled to explain?

Although cherries and berries are both considered fleshy fruits, cherries are drupes, which are a type of fruit that contain a single seed in the center surrounded by a hard core.  Berries are a type of fruit on which the seed or seeds are located on the outside flesh. 

Furthermore, the pits of cherries are poisonous and should not be consumed, whereas the seeds of most berries (such as raspberries, blackberries, and mulberries) are edible and are frequently consumed with the fruit.  Cherries are not only a popular food that grows on trees but are very high in antioxidants and are known to have medical properties.  Cherries come in both tart and sweet varieties.  In general, the brighter the red shade of the cherry, the more tart the flavor.

Other types of drupes include peaches and plums.

Sheila responded knowledgeably, “They are one and the same.  Birds bring them.”

I then posted this:  “Elderberries and chokecherries are not the same:  Differences Between Elderberries and Chokecherries.  These are chokecherries, and are very good in pies, jellies, and jams.  Here’s another good recipe:  Low Sugar & Honey Chokecherry Jelly.”

Sheila, not to be deterred, then replied to someone who had commented on the photo, “People make juice from them but if you don’t know how to prepare them they can kill you eventually.  I just let the birds eat them.”

My answer:  Just don’t eat the pits, and you’ll be fine.  But most people with taste buds won’t be eating handfuls of them in any case; they’re quite tart.  Animals, however, including moose, can and do eat the entire fruit and the leaves, and thereby poison themselves.  For a little more education on chokecherries, you can read this article by the United States Department of Agriculture:  Chokecherry (Prunus virginana) 

Sheila, not liking this answer, replied, “If even you wind up with stem, leafs, or barks in your pot, you die!  Whole tree pozeness.”

Well, I don’t eat whole trees, pozeness or not.  And a couple of leaves or stems in a boiling pot are not going to kill anyone.  Cherry pits contain varying amounts of the poison (or ‘pozen’, if you prefer) amygdalin, which your body converts into cyanide.  Cooking the pits will destroy the amygdalin.

You know, there are a lot of things – not just chokecherries and elderberries – that can kill people if they’re too lazy to do things properly!

In the hopes of assuaging all this fearmongering, I added more information to my post:

Elderberries are also good in jams, jellies, pies... and they are good for various ailments, too:  Health Benefits of Elderberries

There are several stores in Montana where we have purchased gift items, including Wild Chokecherry Jelly, Elderberry Jelly, and all sorts of Huckleberry Jams, lotions, coffees, teas, and suchlike.  The chokecherries and huckleberries are local, and most of the things they sell are also made locally.  

Take a look at Leslie’s Montana Shop:

https://lesliesmontanashop.com/shop/wild-chokecherry-jelly/

https://lesliesmontanashop.com/shop/elderberry-jelly/

 I, for one, plan on continuing to have yummy chokecherry and elderberry jam on my toasted English muffins.

A friend likes to ‘raise’ Painted Lady butterflies each year especially for the enjoyment of her two young granddaughters.  She buys them as caterpillars.  She sent me a picture of several butterflies that had just emerged from their cocoons and were sunning and drying their wings on the sides of their net cage next to a window in her house.  She keeps the blinds closed so the butterflies don’t get too hot. 

A few hours later, she sent video clips of her granddaughters with butterflies perched on their fingers, and then flying off into the nearby woods.  (The butterflies went flying, not the granddaughters.)

I asked, “Can a person raise Monarchs?”

“One Monarch caterpillar costs a King’s ransom,” she informed me.  Then, “You see what I did there?”

I replied, “Well, how about the Purple Emperor, then?”

Receiving no answer for a few days (maybe she just thought I was making stuff up, trying to be funny), I added, “Look what a pretty butterfly the Purple Emperor is.”

Isn’t it beautiful?  It’s a rare butterfly from central-southern England.

Wednesday when I got ready for the evening church service, I chose shoes carefully again, as my broken little toe was still quite sore.  I would’ve liked to have worn the cute bronze strappy sandals again that I wore last Sunday night; they only have a couple of thin, rhinestone-bedecked straps over the toes, and don’t hurt much at all – but I’d forgotten they are the shoes that go SQUAWK-FLAP-TICKETY, SQUAWK-FLAP-TICKETY, SQUAWK-FLAP-TICKETY, with every step I take!  Furthermore, the pew we usually sit in is way up front. 

When we got to church, plenty of people were already taking up residence in their own pews.  It was almost time for the music to start, and the church was silent as a tomb.  So there I went down the aisle, doing the SQUAWK-FLAP-TICKETIES all the way to our pew.  AAaaaaaccckkk.

What makes those shoes tick?!  Or ‘tickety’, as it were.

I hunted through my closet, and happily discovered that one of my newer pairs of shoes were fairly comfortable, and made no flappity-tickety-squeaks, into the bargain.  As an extra bonus, they even matched my outfit.

 Every day last week, I scanned pictures.  Here are the Jackson siblings from June 25, 2000, at Bobby and Hannah’s wedding.  Back row:  Joseph, Dorcas, Hannah, Keith, and Teddy.  Front row:  Caleb, Victoria, Lydia, and Hester.

My blind friend, Penny, was recently exclaiming over some zucchini/chocolate chip muffins that Victoria had given her.

I told her the story behind the recipe:

Once upon a time, Victoria was making zucchini muffins, back before Caleb was married.

He came sauntering through the kitchen, saw his sister vigorously mixing batter in a big bowl, peered down at the recipe, then scurried off to a cupboard where he had squirreled away a big bag of chocolate chips.

Back he came, and, before anyone could stop him, he dumped that whole bag of chips into the mix.

“Ohhhhhhh, you RUINED it!” howled Victoria, trying to scoop them out.

But Caleb grabbed a spoon and started stirring, saying, “No, it’ll be good!  Just try it.”

She stood back and watched glumly while her brother went on sabotaging her muffin batter.

Then, resigned, she scooped big spoonfuls into the muffin tin and slid it into the oven.

I am now the only one in the whole family who likes them better sans chocolate chips. 

All the younger kids usually make them that way, ever since.

Here’s a favorite picture of mine:  Our daughter Hester Yvonne with my mother, Hester Maurine (Winings) Swiney.  The picture was taken on my nephew Robert’s wedding to his wife Margaret on June 6, 1993.

I have been getting texts informing me that my Amazon account has been temporarily blocked on account of ‘fraudulent activity’, and they send a link I’m supposed to click on to ‘solve the problem’.  If I don’t do this, so they say, my account will be permanently shut down.

I never click on such links.  Instead, I just go to Amazon and buy stuff, in order to prove them wrong.  hahaha

Well, actually, I was needing to buy a few things anyway, and did so, thus proving them wrong – but I already knew it was baloney.  😂

Friday afternoon, I discovered that I had 301 less photos scanned than I thought, because I found a folder that had been inadvertently duplicated when I renamed it a while back.  I had five more albums to scan, plus one or two boxes of loose pictures.  But I was missing some 25 albums!!!  What in the world??  I needed to look for a couple more bins in the basement and maybe in the addition.  I was also beginning to wonder if 4 or 5 albums were destroyed in the house fire we had in the summer of 1988.  I hardly have any pictures of Dorcas when she was a baby!  

The 2TB flash drives came on Wednesday, and Friday morning the cute miniature trunks to hold those little flash drives arrived from Hobby Lobby.

The lightning adaptors for iPhones came, too, and will work fine.  However, the USB type C adaptors for Android phones have openings that are slightly too small for the drives to fit into.  I’ll have to return them and try another brand.

That evening, I sent this picture to Robert, asking, “Remember the time, way back when, you asked us to get you some big rocks in Colorado?  Well, we tried:

“We didn’t realize until I looked at the picture after I got it printed why we couldn’t pick it up.  One kid was sitting on top of it!”

That’s Teddy up on top.  Around the base are Hannah, Victoria, Dorcas, Lydia, Caleb, Hester, Larry, Joseph, and Keith.  It was summertime of 1998.

Later that night, I sent a few pictures to Hester and Lydia of them playing in the snow on the hillsides near Lake North, writing, “In case you ever wondered why it was so hard to pull that sled back up the hill, Hester, there’s your answer:  your sister had a good grip on your coat!  And yes, Hester, you did plaster Anthony smack in the back of the head.

“That’s okay, though; we had no sooner pulled up and climbed out of our vehicle than one of the twins (and I think, but am not sure, that it was Anthony) let fly with a hard-packed snowball that hit me square in the chest.  Made my heart misfire now and then the rest of the day.  Felt sort of like I was on an elevator whose bottom kept dropping out from under me. 

“Anyway, I hope you got the twin that got me, haha.” 

Below are a couple of shots from March 6, 2000.  This is the Missouri River at DeSoto Bend, DeSoto National Wildlife Refuge.  Larry took the silhouette of me taking pictures of the sunset over the river.

Saturday Afternoon News!!!  ——  I found the lost albums!  Two large bins full of albums were tucked behind a dresser under the low eaves in the unfinished addition.  On one hand, I’m so very glad I found them.  On the other hand, that’s a whole lot more photos to scan.  Gotta hurry, hurry, hurry.  I no longer know if I can get done in time for Christmas.

I didn’t go to Omaha to visit Loren that day, as Larry had too many things to do to go with me, and I had a bit of a stomach bug, anyway.  So I was glad that Loren’s sister-in-law and niece Judy and Sara, along with Sara’s four boys, had visited him Friday, giving him a few things for his upcoming 84^th  birthday tomorrow, August 9. 

Sara made Loren chocolate chip cookies.  Judy gave him some Motor Trend magazines, some grapes, and a small box of candy.  Roslyn ate three cookies while they were there, prompting Loren to say that he had to try one.  😅  He was probably beginning to worry that he would miss out entirely!

Sara played hymns on that beautiful Yamaha baby grand piano.  That was the first time she had ever played a grand piano.  Loren enjoyed it; I’m sure he misses our music.  Judy said he was proud of the red Volkswagen Beetle and the red 1956 pickup Larry and I gave him last week, and had fun showing them to his great-nephews.

I got 113 pictures scanned Saturday, bringing the total to 32,826.

Victoria sent some pictures of Carolyn and Violet in their flowergirl dresses.  They are going to be flowergirls in their Uncle Jared’s (Kurt’s younger brother’s) wedding next month.

Last Saturday when we were almost to the nursing home to visit Loren, perhaps you’ll recall that we stopped at the Walgreens a couple of blocks away and purchased a Chobani yogurt drink to give him.  We also bought ourselves some Bai herbal tea, and another bottle of tea that looked refreshing on that hot day.  I don’t remember what kind of tea it was, but my research online tells me it was probably some type of Kombucha tea.  We had never heard of it before.  But we like to try different things, and, like I said, it looked good.

Upon leaving the nursing home, Larry opened that bottle of tea and took a small sip.

He made a face and promptly held it out to me.  “Try this, and tell me what you think!” he said.

What, do I look like the King’s Food Taster??!

I don’t glug down any suspicious drinks.  I sniffed it.  Vewy ca’fully, I did.

“This stuff is fermented!” I exclaimed, screwing the lid on tightly. 

I turned the bottle around and started reading.

Sure enough, after reading through a list of seemingly innocuous ingredients – black tea, green tea, kiwi juice, blueberry juice, fresh-pressed ginger juice – I turned the bottle again and read, “Kombucha is fermented to perfection and bubbling with benefits; it’s purity you can trust with potency you can feel – and flavor you will love!”

False.

We did not love it.  Yuck.  It stank, and, according to Larry, tasted terrible.  We pitched that bottle into the first garbage can we came to.  We don’t drink.

Yes, yes, I do see in my research that Kombucha tea is called ‘non-alcoholic’, even though it does in fact have alcohol in it – each bottle contains about one-eighth the amount of alcohol found in a bottle of beer.

My one experience with fermented beverages was the time someone threw a six-pack of beer onto the graveled road in front of our house, back when I was about 4 years old.  It sat there in the hot sunshine... until I spotted it. 

What’s that? I wondered, and went to see. 

I had never before seen a can holding something drinkable and sporting a pull tab.

I pulled the tab.

Pshsshhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhssssssssssshhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!

It sprayed all over me.

Huh, what in the world.  Whatever made it do that?!

I wondered if the next can would do the same thing.

It did.

Pshsshhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhssssssssssshhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!

I went off somewhat indignantly to report on the matter to my mother.

She then insulted me worse than ever before or after by putting me straight into the tub, clothes and all, whereupon she proceeded to pour pitchers of water over me, exclaiming energetically the entire time.  Finally, she took my clothes and rushed off to the washing machine with them, still exclaiming.  Back she came to start in on me with soap and shampoo.

It must’ve been quite a shock for her, to have the little girl she called her ‘cleanest child’ come in the door smelling like a brewing company!

Here are Caleb, Lydia, Victoria, Hannah, me, Joseph, and Hester at DeSoto National Wildlife Refuge.

I thought the hubbub had died away, but, as it turns out, my chokecherry picture is still bringing the knowledgeable out from their hollow logs:

Some lady just wrote the following:  “don’t try they u with feel like to can’t swallow that’s why they call them chokecherries”

If you really think you should listen to and be alarmed by such a bright bulb as that, then go right ahead.  Don’t research anything; just take what she says for gospel truth (if you can understand what in the world she said, that is.  I think she was trying to write in Pig Latin).

Don’t people like that ever read any prior commentary before stating their exalted opinions?  Obviously, they don’t look anything up – at least, not on trustworthy websites, they don’t.

If you knew how many times I have posted a picture of my quilting, typing something like this above the picture:  “Pantograph is called ‘Twinkling Stars’ by Dawna Sanders; available digitally at IntelligentQuilting.com, or in paper form at TheQuiltStore.com” – only to have the very first commenter ask, “What’s the name of the pantograph, and where can I purchase it?”

Read, lady, read!  Good grief.

No, I didn’t say that.  I very politely answered her, “Info above photo.”

I clicked ‘Hide’ on the “don’t try they u with feel” comment.  I could just delete it; but I might need to reread it one of these days, if perchance the GoComics page goes down or something.  (And of course I needed to copy and paste it into my journal, heh heh.)

Here's Black Kitty, from the Spring of 2000:

On to other kitchen topics.  There are very old stains on my very old laminate countertop that I would very much like to remove. 

My investigating has given me a variety of things to try.  But look at this, from the BarKeepersFriend.com: 

“What should you not use Bar Keepers’ Friend on?

“Bar Keepers’ Friend cleans and polishes most hard, nonporous surfaces.  However, never use Bar Keepers’ Friend on the following:  cast iron, granite, marble, wood, fabric, leather, or painted surfaces.  June 16, 2021”

Next, from the very same website, and in the very same year:

“Can you use Bar Keepers’ Friend on countertops?

“Bar Keepers’ Friend is specially formulated for use on smooth, polished stone – including granite, marble, and quartz.  Its pH-balanced formula won’t scratch or mar stone finishes, and it’s gentle enough to use every day.  September 15, 2021”

Okay, let’s examine this contradictory advice.  Those were snippets from Google Search; maybe there is more information on the website.

Oooookay.  Here it is:  Bar Keepers’ Friend has a special cleaner for granite and stone, not the original 1882 powdered formula.

There, that’s just one more reason not to go by the Google snippets!  Click on a trusted link, and go directly to the article for the complete information.

Annnnd... speaking of investigating and exploring, the Sheila person just wrote again on the CPTWND (Chokecherry Post That Will Not Die), which now sports dozens of comments, many of which give good and helpful advice and links with additional information, yummy recipes, and stores where one can purchase various jams, jellies, coffees, teas, lotions, and so forth.  Here’s what she wrote:

“Hope you find your research on them” 

Now, the best answer, of course, would be, “Duh.”  However, my Mama taught me to be nice, if at all possible.  So I wrote, wrote I, “It’s all contained in the comments on this post.”

I think Sheila should just stick to Twinkies.  Someone already cooked them.

One more interesting piece of information before I end this missive:  Did you know that the fruits of the cashew, almond, and pistachio plants (and other tree nuts) are not true nuts, but are rather classified as ‘drupes’, just like those notorious chokecherries are?  As previously mentioned, drupes are fruits that are fleshy on the outside and contain a shell covering a seed on the inside. 

Yes, those delicious, sweet almonds that we enjoy used to be bitter and poisonous ‘wild almonds’.  Over time, farmers have bred domesticated almond trees to produce mostly sweet seeds.  This mutation inhibits the production of amygdalin almost completely.  Sweet almonds still have trace amounts of amygdalin but not enough, by any reasonable measure, to produce dangerous amounts of cyanide.  But even today, consuming 50 or even fewer of the wild, bitter almonds could potentially kill an adult, and a small handful contains enough cyanide to be lethal to a child.

Shall I post that on Facebook, and start another riot?  😂

Well, since nothing more dramatic is happening, I shall bring this chokecherry of a letter to a close, and trot me upstairs to the scanner.

Gotta scan... gotta scan... gotta scan...

,,,>^..^<,,,          Sarah Lynn           ,,,>^..^<,,,