Mike and I were talking the other day about foods we used to eat all the
time as children but haven't had in many years. One of those foods was
canned fruit cocktail, a product both of our mothers were quite fond of.

IIRC fruit cocktail was a mix of chucnks of peaches, pears and pineapple,
along with whole green grapes and bright red maraschino cherries. I started
thinking that maybe I should can some up this summer, except without the
pineapple since Mike doesn't like pineapple.

But then I got thinking about the cherries. When I was a kid, my sibs and I
used to fight over who got the cherries -- there were only three or four in
a can, but they provided 90% of the visual attractiveness of the dish. Once
when canning cherries and peaches, I put up a couple of jars that had both
fruits. They tasted yummy, but the cherry color leeched into the peaches so
that both fruits ended up about the same shade.

I'm thinking that back in 1960's the manufactureres were able to keep the
color in the cherries becase the color was actually Red Dye #2 that for some
chemical reason doesn't leech out into the sugar syrup. Since I certainly
don't want to do that, is there some way to keep the color in the cherries?
If not, is there some other fruit that won't leech its red color into the
other ingredients so I'd have a yummy product that has that nice visual pop
of the red fruit amongst the pastel ones?

What if I used dried cherries? It was Bob's response to Barb's post about
her Apricot Pineapple Cherry Jam that made me think about the Fruit Cocktail
Cherry problem.

Anny