Plum Rich!

Bill and I went up to Seaton Delaval to our usual green market for the first time this year. I bought an enormous amount of food for only £62. We were about to drive off the street when Bill remarked, "We didn't want those plums..." There was a stack of boxed plums for £2 each that we briefly considered on our way to other offerings. 

When he said this, I remembered having bought a very large box of chestnut mushrooms for £1. I roasted them - it took several batches - then froze them in small bunches. We enjoyed the rich flavour of those mushrooms for nearly a year and could always tell if either of us had added some to a dish. We similarly enjoyed asparagus at nearly every meal for a week when I bought 5 bunches - at 10 pence each! They may have been past their best, but I certainly couldn't tell it. So, we did a u-turn and ended up buying 2 boxes of plums and 2 small containers of blueberrys (50 pence each). 

The blueberries went straight into the freezer while I focused on the plums. I went through them thinking I'd find mushy or rotten fruit, but instead I found 5.834 kg (nearly 13 lbs) of perfectly lovely plums ready to eat (just counting these we paid 31p/pound). I threw away (composted) 8 as too ugly to consider and there was another 3.061 kg (nearly 7 lbs) of plums to cook (counting all the plums minus the ugly 8, we paid only 20p/pound!). They aren't so much spoilt as beginning to dry out. I've no idea how they've been stored since coming from South Africa but I'm looking forward to having plums with our desserts for a while.

I tackled the older plums first and found that the dry bits were easily discarded and I froze a ziplock bag of the juicy remainders minus pits; unfortunately these are not 'freestone' pits but 'welded-in pits.  Most recipes call for fresh fruit but I'm happy to experiment with thawed frozen and I have my eye on Plum Flummery (love the name!) made with fresh or thawed plums. If that happens I'll be sure to let you know how it goes. If all else fails, they can always go into spice cake.

I looked up plum desserts that can be frozen and found some interesting ideas:

Plum and Almond Buttermilk Cobbler

Plum Cakes

Plum Crumble

Then, as luck would have it one of my favourite blogs Down to Earth did her usual fine selection of weekend links and thus I found North West Edible Life. I've been doing tons of catch up reading and one of the things that caught my eye was her no pectin jam. 

This is going to be my first Plum Project! 

Plums and sugar out on the potting bench in the garage...to save space in the refrigerator.