plum jam

I returned from the East without Andrew. Apparently without a playmate, I get domestic? Whatever. Regardless, when I arrived back in Davis, I went for a walk to the local park where there are fig, lemon, organge, plum, and olive trees. I am never sure when things are ripe, so walking by the park every few weeks has allowed me to learn about the CA fruit schedule. I would be remiss if I were to leave out the following link regarding the reasons behind why fruit trees were planted in Davis' parks (and a Daily Show twist on Davis CA).

A week ago, the only almost-ripe fruits were plums so I picked a bag. They ripened at the same time and, not having a huge appetite for plums, I decided to follow my canning dreams. This is a great song by Greg Brown, but a poor (somewhat incomprehensible?) version, I apologize respectfully:


Anyhoo, this time I had 0.5L plum juice (which included 2 reamed lemons), which I blended. The recipe calls for the addition of 3/4 volume sugar, but I only added 0.3L (yikes!).


The plums were surprisingly tart, so the sugar really helped. I cooked the sugar-plum juice for 10 minutes more. Then, I bottled them up so we can have "a little taste of the Summer" in the Winter months.