A surplus of cherries is a problem I'm not used to having. But alas, I was faced with a few pounds of cherries, more than we could eat before they went bad. As I flipped through my canning books looking for a cherry jam recipe, something else caught my eye. Pickled cherries. It sounded both bizarre and intriguing at the same time. I'd heard of people pickling fruit but had never actually tried it. And since our busy schedules left very little time for a typical batch of canning, the fact that the pickle could be made and canned in under 20 minutes was extra appealing. And look, ma, pits! The cherries are pickled whole so the stray-pit-problem was no longer an issue. I made two batches, one with sweet Bing cherries and spiced with cinnamon, cloves, and star anise. The other soaked the Rainier cherries in a vinegar brine with black peppercorns and bay leaf. The flavor differences were subtle, but one came out tasting (as Taylor put it) "like Christmas," while the other was a tad more

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