Jul 13, 2009

the past 2 weekends have been a bit unusual in that C has been focused on one insane project up on our hill while i've spent my time inside working on a separate project. a nut-job friend of ours got the idea that we need a deck at the top of our hill, and that it needed to be done by august. C happily obliged and the two of them have spent the past two weekends digging 6 enormous holes (in dry clay dirt), hauling 24 80lb bags of concrete up the hill and then carrying concrete footers up after. progress as of last weekend:by now, they've constructed the footers of the deck and will start framing on friday. more photos to come.

while this chaos was unraveling, i quietly set out to collect all of the wild plums in our backyard and make jam. they're not very tasty eating plums but make yummy jam. they're yellow, just larger than a big cherry and require pitting...after 2 weekends of collecting and tinkering i've made 14 jars of sour plum jam, 20 jars of plum lavender jam, 8 jars of plum chutney, 2 jars of pickled plums (per this recipe) and 3 big jars of plums covered in vodka that will hopefully become something lovely in a few months. we still have at least 2 trees that remain covered in plums not to mention the neighbors trees that they're begging me to harvest. any other plum recipes i should try out?

3 comments:

evencleveland said...

Holy moly. That's a lot of plums.

Have you thought about trying a plum mostarda? It's a traditional Italian condiment that's sweet and savory, and it makes killer condiment for cheeses, meats, crackers, you name it.

Here's a recipe:
http://italianfood.about.com/od/saucescondiments/ss/aa121305.htm

and you can find more online. I've had it with plums. Delicious.

scottypants said...

um, these look delish! what about dried plums, like what you can buy in chinatown, where they are sweet an salty?

xx scotty

Denise | Chez Danisse said...

Last year we were right where you are right now (or where you were in July). We had loads of plums, those same little guys, yellow on one tree and purple on another. My neighbor also had some Santa Rosa plums she was donating to us! We made a few different plum jams, some chutney, and offered up big bowls of plums (and jam recipes) to our neighbors.

I like your idea of making a plum lavender jam. I've never cooked with lavender, but I do live near a shop with a lovely lavender sea salt cookie. I guess it's time I try cooking with lavender.

Our chutney was okay, but I didn't love it. Any chance you'd be up for sharing your chutney recipe?

I also like the idea of pickled plums (or grapes) and the SK recipe looks tasty and simple.

I'm probably about a month too late with my suggestion, but a food bank might enjoy your extra plums.

Thanks for this post!