Had a guy at the Shoreline farmers market teach me something about cherries I never knew

I was buying a basket from this older farmer named Roy near the stand off 145th. He told me the darker red cherries aren't always the sweetest, it's actually the ones with a little yellow patch that have the best sugar. I'd been picking them wrong for 40 years. Has anyone else gotten a simple tip from a stranger that completely changed how you buy something?

3 comments

3 Comments

karen_west5913d ago

My neighbor Bob swore by that dark red cherry trick for years until he brought home a basket from a stand by the highway that looked perfect but tasted like sour grass. I bought those pretty ones once too and ended up tossing half of them. The yellow patch tip works for some varieties like Bing cherries but not all of them. Actually the lighter red Rainier cherries are supposed to be the sweetest regardless of any yellow patch. I think that farmer Roy might have just been trying to move the ones with the blemishes on them.

robinj2913d ago

Haha yeah my cherry picking skills are about as reliable as my ability to guess which avocados are actually ripe. I just grab whatever looks shiny and hope for the best.

rubyk8612d ago

Oh for goodness sake, @robinj29, I feel your pain on the avocado guessing game. I heard once that you can tell if an avocado is ready by flicking the little stem nub off and checking the color underneath, which has been a game changer for me. As for the cherries, I actually read a study somewhere that said the yellow patch is a sign of more sun exposure, which does increase sugar content in some varieties. But Karen has a point about the Rainier cherries being reliably sweet regardless. Still, I've been using Roy's tip for a few weeks now and my pie fillings have been noticeably better, so I'm sticking with it.