Day 90

Ron and I used to always try to go cherry picking during Memorial Day weekend but haven’t had a chance to go since we’ve been back from Singapore.  We thought we’d take Simon for a little road trip and to start a tradition as a family.

We headed out to Brentwood and went to find lunch first.  I searched Yelp and settled on this place called Sticky Chicken and Ribs.  We ordered the 3-item combo of tri-tip, ribs, and 3 pc sticky chicken plus a side order of garlic fries.

The meat of the ribs fell right off the bone and their BBQ sauce was pretty okay.  The tri-tip was thinly sliced but seemed a bit dry so needed some BBQ sauce.  They have other sauces there too, we tried the bourbon mustard sauce (did not like) and a spicy BBQ sauce (preferred the original).  The sticky chicken was interesting, it had a sweet batter with a sweet hot chili sugary sauce all over it.  I liked the crust on the chicken but wished it was a bit crispier (not sure if that would have been possible).  The sauce almost reminds me of the Vietnamese sweet chili sauce that we always used to marinate chicken wings which we baked.

The garlic fries seemed a bit under cooked but the garlic was nice and spicy, likely because it was still very raw.

After lunch, we went to find ourselves a cherry farm to pick some cherries.  We couldn’t find the one we usually go to so stopped by Chavez U-Pick Cherries.  The cherries were $2.50 per pound.  This farm did not have a weight requirement which was good since we did pass by some farms which required at least a 2 or 5 lb purchase.  Of course the cherry trees near the parking lot were well picked through so we ended up having to walk inside and near the back to find the trees still full of fruit.

We took advantage of some of the empty rows to take some photographs of Simon.  Only problem was that Simon can’t sit up by himself yet so we had to prop him up somehow.  Luckily, the aisles had lots of divots so that we could put him in to stabilize his butt.  We brought our picnic blanket so the grass and dirt wouldn’t bother his skin and used the bucket for our cherries to prop him against.  Unfortunately, it was hard to get him to look at the camera and every time he did, he would start to topple over.  Maybe he’s not really that photogenic… he’s got that concerned look like usual.

So instead we tried a different approach, Ron held Simon over his left shoulder and I tried to take the picture cutting Ron’s body out of the shot.  Simon wasn’t loving the camera today but in this picture, his expression makes him resemble my brother.

We ended the afternoon after Simon fell asleep in my arms.  It was probably really warm for him so made him sleepy.  I am looking forward to next year when Simon should be walking and he can walk among the rows of tree himself and pick cherries.  We picked about 8.5 lbs of cherries for $21.25.  Nothing beats the taste of freshly picked cherries and the experience is always one to remember.  It’s like a treasure hunt to find the biggest and juiciest cherries.

Yum!  Looking forward to digging in.