Boiling Pants

Michigan is famous for its cherries.  That is how William convinced me to buy a cherry pitter at a yard sale last week.

That same evening we picked up a bag of cherries at the corner farmer's stand and the cherry pitter became the new favorite toy, everyone was anxious to help.  We made 4 cherry pies in 4 days, they were both delicious and messy. 

This morning James didn't have any clean church pants.  I dug through the dirty clothes piles and found them crumpled up along side several other cherry stained items.  They've been sitting there for almost a week because I didn't want to face the challenge.  This morning I had no choice because James had no other pants.

 A quick google search suggested boiling the stains out.  Could it really be that simple?  It was! At least it was with the poplin shirts and khaki pants.  After a 30 second dip they were ready for the wash.

Maryanna's new linen genie pants on the other hand gave me a bit more trouble.  I believe I boiled them for as long as it took my children to eat their oatmeal, all the while Maryanna was whining, "I don't want you to cook my clothes".  The boys made a joke of it and suggested boiling all sorts of other inedible objects, diapers, legos, My Little Ponies, car keys, and books.

Still no luck after 10 minutes of boiling. In fact that cute little red hang tag I sewed on slipped in and leaked its dye across the top of the pants. It was a quick rescue to the sink and with a shot of Zout the red dye came out but the cherry juice was still a dull purple.

I had a flash back to my  youth watching my mom smear a juicy cantaloupe all over the red ostrich skin binder my Dad brought back for her from Africa.  When I asked her what she was doing she replied, "someone must have mistaken this for a cutting board and since I knew I couldn't get the stain out I'm just staining the whole thing".  At age 15 that seemed like a crazy thing to do but there I was this morning, more than 15 years later, planning to make yet another cherry pie only to roll the new linen genie pants in whatever juices were left in the mixing bowl.

Instead, I gave them another rinse, scrubbed in some Zout, let them sit then boiled them again and again.  Finally they came clean in more time than it took to sew them and certainly more time than it would have taken to make another pie.  Next time those kids are going to cook and eat their pie in their underwear.