Chapter 40

The coming week was going to start with a bang: Monday a meeting with FiberDyne and Major Lancaster. Tuesday, we would be flown to Travis Air Force base where we would hold a press conference where FiberDyne's status as a supplier of strategic materials would be announced. I wondered why the defense department would even bother with something like that, but assumed I would know more after meeting the Major on Monday.

I talked to Kelli briefly, asking her if she had thought of bringing anything for lunch on the boat. She hadn't, so I volunteered to bring something as an after lunch dessert. I could hear the surprise in her voice when she agreed. To be honest, her surprise was echoed by my silent trepidation. I'd been inspired by two things. The large bag of cherries I brought back from the store and the ice cream maker I'd seen sitting on a high shelf in the pantry.

Google and the internet found me a million recipes for cherry sherbet, cherry sorbet, cherry ice cream, cherry compote, cherry whatever-you-want. The hardest part was settling on a recipe. In the end I settled for a cherry sherbet recipe. I had everything I needed except for a liqueur called kirsch.

Amazingly, my Google maps search for kirsch got a hit on a place called La Czar, on the other side of Forestville from the FiberDyne plant. Spitting distance!

I knew I could probably find the stuff in any upscale liquor store, but there was something pleasing about being able to say my sherbet was made from fresh cherries and locally made cherry liqueur. I called the number and they were open and would be happy to sell me a bottle or two. I gulped when she quoted the price, but then smiled into the phone as I remembered: I was Scrooge McDuck!

I hadn't had an excuse to ride the bike in a few days, so I made the short trip on the bike. I made sure I had plenty of extra padding with me. I definitely didn't want a cherry liqueur-scented saddlebag.

I got back home after a short but pleasant ride wondering if I was biting off more than I could chew. I had enough cherries to try a second batch if the first didn't come out, but I wasn't sure I had enough time. I looked at the clock. I had time to get a first batch done and in the freezer for the requisite 4 hours if I was willing to stay up a little late.

Step one was pitting the cherries. Somebody somewhere has probably invented a cherry pitting tool, and since I had the laptop in the kitchen with me so I could consult the online recipe without running back and forth to the living room, I was tempted to search for it, jut for grins, but managed to resist the temptation. I fell back on old reliable, my field knife – properly cleaned of course, and quickly found a quick method by placing a cherry on the cutting board with the knife blade resting on top of it. I pressed the blade down and forward, rolling the cherry along until I'd cut clear around the circumference. Then it was a simple twist of the two halves to separate them and then a flick of the knife tip to pop the pit out of whichever half it elected to remain in.

Well, most of the time the roll went clean, but not every time, and most of the time the flick of the knife tip worked, but not every time, so it took a bit longer and was a bit messier than I'd anticipated. Still, I got the three cups of pitted cherries a lot quicker than I expected, even after packing them down slightly. I also realized that I was going to have little to no cherries left by the time I'd gotten my six cups – and I was going to be a mess. I grabbed a bottle of iced tea out of the fridge to wet my whistle while I worked and while I was doing that, went and turned the TV to a music channel and turned the volume up. Out of respect for Harley I hunted for something not so modern and settled on an classic rock station.

By the time I had the first three cups of cherries and quarter cup of water boiling in a saucepan, I realized that I wasn't exactly sure what some of the directions meant. Harley surfaced a little then to reassure me that his old-school memories knew what correctly prepared cherries would look like, though his memories were from making cherry preserves as a youngster.

The next big step was getting the blender ready for the cherries, once they were done cooking. I also brought the ice cream maker out and cleaned it thoroughly. I had no idea how long it had been sitting, but it needed to be cleaned before and after use, I knew that much.

Once I could tell Harley thought the cherries were softened properly, I poured the hot contents of the sauce pan into the blender and gave it a few pulses. I eyeballed the results, not knowing what I was really looking for and then gave it two more pulses. That was the most the recipe called for and trusted it to be right, since Harley and I had no idea about this phase of the recipe.