The cherries are incredible right now. The ones I used here were Bing, from Oregon (this was a week or ago and the Ontario ones weren’t at the market yet) and disarmingly sweet, so it seemed natural to pair them with a little vanilla, as in cherry pie with vanilla ice cream. Like a slightly haggard, but still sexy truck-stop diner waitress – wholesome and saucy at the same time.

Cherry-vanilla jam

4.5 cups cherry
1 cup sugar
2 tbsp water
2 tbsp lemon juice
1 vanilla bean
1 package low-sugar pectin

I experimented with low-sugar pectin here. Though the package suggests you can use no sugar at all, I was dubious. I’d heard you needed a little sweetness. So: finely chop the cherries, add lemon juice, water, and pectin. Bring to a rolling boil. Add sugar and boil hard for five minutes. That’s about it. Oh and skim any foam that bubbles up. The final product: cherry pie & vanilla ice cream in a jar. Yum. Oh, wait: of course you have to sterilize the jars first, and boil them once filled with jam (tops on, duh), for 10 minutes. The folks who make the pectin and the jars I use (Bernardin) have a handy web site with tips on this technical stuff: www. homecanning.ca.