JAM!

I got like 15lbs of plums. :D Free, I just had to wrangle the ladder over to the park.

Used about half of them by now. Some on making plums in rum sauce (probably having more of that for lunch quite shortly!) some on making plum liqueur (batch 1 drinkable, but needs improvement, batch 2 currently steeping) but most on 6 pints of plum jam!

Alas, I had a little trouble getting it to thicken, and finally, after spending like an hour stirring boiling jam, shrugged and said good enough, so it came out kinda runny. Tasty, though!

Saved one pint for me, and gave 5 away to friends.

There was a hiccup in the deliveries (because nothing whatsoever can go entirely right this year) when my car battery turned out to be dead. But we have a trickle charger, so I charged it overnight and tried again today. Just got back, in fact, and it was awesome to see my friends in person after so long!!! There's one person on the list who I see regularly, but the others I hadn't seen since back in March.

We stayed six feet back and just said hi and dropped jam, but it was still pretty nice.

I feel good about it. I made a thing that was good, and then did a good thing with it. Just the sort of thing my week needed, really. :3

Now, off to make more plums in rum sauce for lunch. Nom.

Plum update:

Did not make plums in rum sauce for lunch because I got a wild hair and decided to decant the steeping plum ethanol and make the next back of liqueur. It was a marked improvement from batch 1, but there are still gains to be made, I feel, so batch 3 needs to happen. First I have to buy more everclear, though!

But after mixing and tasting and mixing and tasting, and then comparison tasting with the first batch, I was plummed out!

So instead of plums in sauce for lunch-dinner (I have strange meal schedules) I had macaroni in home-made marinara with some mexican crema. That sounds weird, but it's SO GOOD. It's basically making a tomato cream sauce. Like vodka sauce? But with more basil, and more tang, because crema.

So I am replete with plum liqueur and good pasta.

But now I definitely need to buy more everclear! I think I know what to do to improve the next batch, so we'll see how that goes.