Wild cherries, cherry-plums & turning into my mother

My parents were, and still are, great foragers; I used to think they were slightly batty as they dragged us around the countryside, as children, looking for free stuff!. I guess it rubbed off more than I thought. Himself grew up in Somerset and was a great scrumper apparently...and he's still fab at jumping gates!
Shropshire & the West Midlands has bountiful hedgerows & I can't drive anywhere now without shouting out if I see fruit dangling, unharvested, by the side of the road. The shout is usually followed by a dreadful realisation that I have, indeed, turned into my mother. No bad thing really.


Having spent the best part of an hour, last weekend, pitting a good kilo of the last of the wild cherries and sharing the juice with my clothing & the rest of the room, I'm took a leaf out of Delia's book and cooked them for 20 minutes, left them to cool then got my hands in! Worked a treat.
 

Last few remaining kilos of cherry-plums

I've applied the same theory to the cherry-plums we found earlier this week but, as we'd nearly 16 kilos & there are not enough hours in the day to hand pick all those stones. They're going through the collander!.

Cooling, ready to be mashed!

 

Now, if I could only find a use for these left-overs!