27 October, 2008

Maraschino Cherries

Have you ever stopped to consider what a marvelous feat of culinary technology is sitting there, all red and shiny, in the pillow of whipped cream on top of your sundae?

It's true, you know. That ordinary ol' maraschino cherry is amazing. It starts out with a normal, natural cherry - but that's before the processing starts. The fruit is completely transformed: the color is removed, the natural flavor taken out - the very structure of the fruit itself is changed into a kind of candy. Then, flavors are added, a uniform color is reintroduced, and the magically-altered cherries are packed in jars of syrup. And all this is done without the stem even falling off! Wow, right?

As cool and awesome as this is, maraschino cherries just became cooler and more awesome. Because yesterday I found Roland BLUE MARASCHINO CHERRIES.

They're delicious. Bright, neon blue, bursting with blue razz flavor, and so thoroughly unnatural it might as well be manufactured at the Soylent Green factory.

Roland is making cherries in five non-traditional varieties: Lemon, Passion Fruit, Lime, Wild Berry, and Chocolate. I've only tried the Wild Berry ones...but I can't wait to try some of the others.

3 comments:

Michele said...

Where dis you find these Dave?

I'm very interested in picking some up.
Thanks so much for the advice on my bread dilemma. I'm thinking about a Costco membership just for the yeast. I'm also going back to my tried and true flour. I made a new bread recipe over the weekend and it was a flop as well. So no more crappy yeast and overpriced fu fu flour.

Anonymous said...

Wow, yes please! Please tell us the secret location that these are at :) I know some grocery stores carry green but these look awesome not just by the color variety but the flavor asortment too, very cool.

Dave said...

I found them at a local job-lot store - Ocean State Job Lot, a Rhode Island-based chain with stores in Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island. The Roland cherries are also available in Shop-Rite stores as far as I know, but at full retail they're around $5 a bottle ("extortionately expensive," to borrow a phrase from my friend Michael Loo.)