Am I alone in this ailment? Last night I stopped at the supermarket on the way home from work and bought nearly a kilo of bing cherries. The Critic phoned while I was there and we agreed to meet up so he could drive me home. The traffic was bad and as I stood on the street corner waiting for him, I managed to eat about three-quarters of a pound of unwashed cherries. I know that cherries are sold covered with nasty pesticides and I knew I should wait until I got home and washed them but I literally could not wait. And I've been that way as long as I can remember, specifically with cherries. I mentioned in an earlier post the fact that my brother used to keep fruit at my grandmother's so that my sister and I could not get at it: as I recall, it was a bag of cherries that served as the straw breaking the camel's back. (Our mother, bless her, is one of those people who just grabs cherries by the handful from the counter, rather than carefully selecting only the good ones...unlike my brother and me.) When I lived in the Dallas/Fort Worth for one hot university summer, I think I lived on cherries and spaghetti alone. (Spaghetti was the food obsession of our host, Tom.)
They have to be Bings, really. Rainiers are prettier and some of the sour cherries are much nicer in pies and pastries. But for plain eating, give me a big juicy Bing: crunchy, sweet, juicy, it has it all. I don't even mind the pit; if there weren't something to slow me down I'd probably eat them even faster. As it is, I generally finish whatevers in front of me unless something interrupts. A meal time, for example. Or a national disaster. Otherwise, I never get tired of them, I rarely admit I'm full and I just keep eating.
And the two pounds I bought last night? There are about 15 left. If cherries were sins I'd be going to hell on the express route...
(On the contrary: according to the California Cherry Advisory Board, cherries are chock full of benefits!)
Absolutely one of my favorite fruits as well. More of treat since they come only once a year.
The cherries have been great in the U.S. this year!
I can't stop on them once I start until I get that "ugggggh" feeling. Cherries are the devil. They're apparently also one of the oldest domesticated fruits.
Really, when you reach into a box of popsicles, which flavor are you hoping for? Grape? I don't think so. I know orange partisans, but Cherry is really where its at.
All - I'm so glad to hear I'm not alone! Perhaps I should start a chapter of Bing Addicts Anon.?
Barrett - I'm not sure, but I think that the flavor everyone looked for in popsicles or candies was always "red" or "purple". No actual relationship to any fruit, real or imagined, has ever been proven...
Meg--I have enjoyed reading your posts for a while now (today catching up on June reading I missed while on vacation). Your comments on cherries resonated with me. I adore them and eat no other fruit for the six weeks or so they're in season stateside.
My favs are Rainier cherries, which I first ate at Pike's Place market--out of the bag. But, I've got no truck with Bings, and one of my favorite sense memories includes eating them at the weekly market in St.-Jean-Pied-de-Port. I was pregnant with my oldest son, who learned to pit cherries in his mouth at 2.
OhMyGod! I can't believe there are others. Sometimes I have to stay home because I've eaten so many cherries that I get diarrhea. I LOVE cherries. I'll eat the entire two pounds, right there. And I'm like you, I know I should wash them, but I just start with one...thinking one cherry with 'stuff' on it will be ok, then I start to legitimize it by saying "it's probably just a little dirt, and dirt won't hurt anyone", then: "i'll just wipe each one as I eat them", and before you know it they're all gone. An office mate brought some organic ones from California and gave them to another officemate (not knowing of my addiction). He offered some to me. I ate all of them, and then had to go home. (He said he wasn't a fan of cherries, but I bought him a bag anyway...and guess what happened to the bag b/c he said he really didn't want any)
Thank you... I now know I am not alone, I too have issues with my cherry addiction... I actually searched the web for 'cherry addiction' only to find there are others and I am not a strange fruit who cannot control herself during cherry season, Hazy, I too have just munched my way through a colleagues bag of cherries, surely you would have thought that last nights fix of cherries would have been enough, obviously not. I am not fussy about the make of cherries. Admittedly some are much nicer than others but I have never met a cherry I didn't like (other than the squishy bruised ones).
Meg, I too will be occupying the seat next to you on the express route
Thank you all for confirming that I am not alone which means I can gorge until the belly ache appears on cherries without feeling I have a problem!
I, too, love bing cherries. And they only come once a year. Right now they are just right, plump, sweet. I was just looking online to see if they can cause diarhhea, because last night I had about 3/4 pound of them, and I had bad bloating and diarhhea all night and this morning. I was trying to pinpoint the cause.
One person here mentioned diarhhea. So I see that it is probably the cause. Anyone else have that problem?
Enjoy, everyone! But like Ben Franklin once said, take the moderate path. Words I need to abide by.
Barry
Personally, I have never suffered any problems with eating copious amounts of cherries but then I've always had a pretty strong constitution and the ability to eat anything and everything in sight. (Meg, the Goat!)
Today at work the office girl bought some bing cherries for a meeting. On the way home from work Ithought I'd stop at the same shop because they were soooo good. (There were leftovers - yay!). TWENTY EUROS for a little basket that wasn't even a kilo. Thank heavens I checked the price before plumping tow baskets in front of the till as I had intended!!
Every year at the same time I come down with a terrible stomach flu which I now acknowledge is actually "Cherry Flu". I'm terribly ill right now but just can't seem to stop. I'm probably eating 1 1/2 - 2 lbs a day (the Bing of course). I always justify my overconsumption by reasoning that it's probably good to attempt to get tired of them since the season is so short and one wouldn't want to spend the rest of the year pining for them.
Unfortunately (sorry for being disgusting!) I LOVE cherries but I've noticed that every time I have them I get diarrhea... I actually found this blog trying to research the reason for it! Yikes! By the by... I am considering moving to Dallas, is it a nice area to live? Specifically Frisco...
Thanks!
Desiree, I'm afraid that was about 16 years ago so I'm not much of an expert on Texas today. I loved the friends I lived with but hated everything else - cities with no downtowns, mega malls and very homophobic and closed-minded people in those days. It may have changed since then for all I know, but in 1990 it wasn't a fun place for this liberal-minded girl!
Having had terrible diarrhea two days in a row, I was wondering about the cherries I've been eating. Wow, am I glad I found this site --- now, at least I know if I eat them I'll be punished for being so greedy...but they ARE SO GOOD !
Has anyone eaten so many cherries that they got itchy eyes? Never had this problem--ate a whole bag of cherries last night...just wondering..
I completely and totally know what you mean I am so obsessive about cherries that I actually broke up with a really nice guy because he ate all my cherries I know its seems stupid.
I see I am not the only one suffering from diahrea after eating cherries. So I did some research on the net and found out that Cherry farms use AZM (Azinphos-methyl is a dangerous neurotoxin derived from nerve agents used during World War II) as a pesticide to kill any insects on cherries.... It is more dangerious than I thought to eat uwashed Cherries... check this site out for the Wikepedia definition of what AZM does: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Azinphos-methyl.. Cheers and stay healthy!! Seb
I've always known that cherries do the diarrhea number on me. But i am absolutely crazy about Bing cherries and am in heaven when I am eating them. I bought 2-1/2 pounds at $5.99 per pound last night and ate all of them while I watched Olympic coverage ,. There was not one bad one in the lot. They were perfect. BUT I already knew I could not leave the house today. It is the big D big time. However my weight plummeted three pounds to 118 which makes me feel good and I remind myself that this cleans out the system and cherries have so many good things health wise. I would like to be able to eat maybe ten and stop. But I cannot. I LOVE Bing cherries.
I couldn't figure out what happened to my normally predictable digestive system at 3 a.m. two nights ago, and 4 a.m. last night. Then I remembered all the cherries I had eaten! Still, I LOVE them, and like the others on here, if it's cherry season, I'm out there buying them daily (at any price), and eating two huge bowls a day. I was reading today that it's the sorbitol in them that does a number on the stomach, but it also can cause weight loss, and I've noticed with me that it does. I'm not giving them up, just being careful WHEN I eat them!
Only a kilo? During the cherry season, I'll buy them in bulk in boxes of about 4kg. They don't last more than a couple of days. If it's not cherry season though, I usually avoid them. The out of season cherries tend to be small, tart, and disastrous to the digestive system.
Nature's candy.
Many of these posts are years old, but I'm glad I found it! Like so many of you, I'm a cherry-holic. I only eat them when they're in season (and relatively cheap), because I eat so many, it would break the bank, otherwise! But I can easily go thru' 3-5 lbs a day.
But also like many of you, when I get carried away, they make me pay! The stomach rumbles, gas (my daughters & husband LOVE that!), and the big D! And that why I found this site, too, trying to find out what it was in cherries that causes this reaction in me.
But I figure it's like a natural purge & since I only get about a week of them a year, it won't kill me (maybe my husband & daughters, but not me! :) But I don't like cherry-flavored anything else...just fresh cherries!
Cherry and Pomegranate seasons are to live for...I see I'm in good company. Getting the 'toots' seems par for the course when more than 15 Bing cherries are consumed in one sitting...There is a produce stand directly across from my apartment complex...I get excercise walking over there to pick the best of the Bings!
I really feel comforted by all the comments in this blog...thanks for being so open some of you.
Yeah, I'm totally that way with cherries. I had dinner at my brother's and I wasn't terribly hungry and didn't eat much of dinner. But the cherries he bought for dessert? Yup. I was having a bad day at work, but bought a pound of cherries at a street vendor and ate the whole thing, felt so much better.
You are soooooo not alone.