National Cherry Day!
Did you know that today is National Cherry Day? A few years ago, Food Lovers Britain launched the Cherry Aid Campaign in a bid to get us all behind the British Cherry.
In the last 50 years we’ve lost 90% of our Cherry Orchards and we now import 95% of the cherries that we eat. So, today is the day that we are all supposed to be buying, cooking and eating British Cherries.
I’m pleased to say that luckily, there are plenty of British Cherries around this season. I spotted them my local Farmer’s Market, and also, it is very encouraging to see that some of our supermarkets are pledging to only stock British Cherries whilst they are in season.
If you want to support the campaign, you could try finding a Cherry Orchard to either pick-your-own fruit or even sponsor a Cherry Tree. You could even try planting a cherry tree or a miniature cherry tree in your garden too.
| Photo Credit: Waitrose Press Centre |
What to do with cherries?
Well, there can be nothing more relaxing than taking a big bowl of cherries out into the garden, sitting down and eating them as is. I tend to look out for blueberry recipes and substitute cherries, for example, instead of a baked blueberry cheesecake you could make a cherry cheesecake.
Cherries do very well in baked cakes, cobblers, crumbles or you could stew them down with sugar to make a cherry syrup to pour over vanilla ice-cream.
Here are some of my favourite British cherry recipes:
Fresh Cherry Cake with a hint of cinnamon – BBC Good Food
Cherry Cheesecake Slice – BBC Good Food
Seared Duck Breast with Cherry Sauce – Gordon Ramsay for The Times Online
More about Cherries:
Tune into Nick Coffer’s Weekend Kitchen today at 12pm on BBC Three Counties Radio to hear me talking more about British cherries on the radio.
I also really enjoyed reading this article on the Cherry Aid Campaign by Silvana Soissons, the inspirational Editor of The Foodie Bugle.
So, if you are out and about today, remember to look out for British cherries and enjoy!
>Thank you!
Oh Emma, that's so funny! It must have been a very large bag of cherries – and absolutely neccesary in the circumstances!
We have a large apple tree but I'd love to plant a cherry tree to see what happens. You can get lovely minature patio trees too which bear fruit so I might try one of those first.
>Everything grown locally tastes so much better! My sister has a beautiful black cherry tree in her back garden in Twickenham, she picked buckets off it recently! A cherry tree would sell any property to me, it's definitely one of my favourite fruits (don't tell my husband but as they were also one of my pregnancy cravings with my son, I might have spent £17 on a bag of english cherries that I HAD to have…!!)…
>lovely post