neonleonb

My newest plum jam is pretty good. Nice and tart! It's a shame that one meal of 3 PB&J sandwiches uses up at least half a jar. That means it won't last as long as I'd hoped--or I'll have to save it for when I really want it.

Last Saturday, Alex and I smoked two ducks. (Yes, we needed giant rolling papers, ha ha.) They were a lot of work, though thankfully Alex did a lot of that before I even got there. (See: purchasing, defrosting, brining, acquiring smoker.) See, this is how lazy I was:

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I forgot to put meat (which I bought specifically for stir fry) in my stir fry. That's indicative of something; I just don't know what.

21 jars of jam is what you get from 10.5 pounds of plums. That's 10.5 pints, or 1 5/16 gallons. It's a lot of jam, so I'll have to start redistributing my surplus wealth.

Fruit trees are productive bastards. I just harvested 9 pounds of plums from the neighborhood trees, and that's not nearly all. The ones in easy reach had already been taken, and there must be another dozen pounds reachable with a ladder. And that's just what's ripe right now, much less ripe in the next few weeks! I had never realized they produced so much fruit. I'll have an outrageous amount of plum jam later this summer. I have to freeze at least most of them for now, because I don't have time to deal with them now. And most of the plums will be ripe while I'm in Finland. It's madness, I say!

Someday, if I ever own a home with a yard, I'm going to have fruit trees. I'll make applesauce, peach preserves, and cherry jam. It'll be a grand old time!

I made and canned a batch of pomegranate molasses today, since I had no more unopened bottles. Damn, that shit takes all day. And I only ended up with 6 bottles. I guess it'll be unusually strong this time.



I'm not sure I'll give it away as freely this time. If it takes so long to make, I might as well treasure it. I like it, and I'm not sure how other people like it. Besides, I have yet to try it as a meat seasoning, which might be interesting. Maybe I'll try it on a post-Thanksgiving turkey (or other fowl).