Watch where you put your feet

It’s raining plums.

My greengauge trees, reine claudes, are producing prodigiously.

And naturally when I left for a week all the trees decided to drop their produce while I was away.

Figs? The wasps feasted. Plums? They are littering the path.

Luckily after raking up a carpet of spoiled plums, there were still enough on the boughs to get a few kilos worth.

But what to do with the blighters? I’m jammed out. And it’s only July.  And I do find the yellow plum jam a bit ho hum. Unless you pile in the sugar and try and caramelize them a bit to make them zing.

So with perfect timing Phil and Vicky arrived and have gone home with a huge box plums.

And here are a tray which I will flash freeze, put in freezer bags, and then decide what to do later.

I will probably turn them into tarts. Or maybe plum and scented pelargonium sorbet. Yes, things are looking up already.

Here are the two jostaberry tarts I made yesterday.  It ought to become a bit of a production line of tarts now all summer.