Last fall there were so many plums that The last batch had to be frozen-in for jamming at a later date. Today is a "later date"...the plum jam inventory is exhausted. Time for action then. The bride dove into the freezer.....so deep that only her ankles were sticking out. After some rapid up and down kicking; with a groan, she re-emerged with frosted hair and eyebrows. Her glasses were thickly frosted-over as well. I offered to pop out to the auto and return with the de-icer spray and a scraper...but that resulted in a gritted-teeth "grimace" and the ice blocks of frozen plums held over her head in a mock throwing threat....or WAS it?! Ach, but with her limited vision, I felt safe-- not safe enough to tease, however. She shook and pulled those clotted plums out of their plastic bags and let them fall into the warming pan. This slow warming up required that one of us stayed there and stirred often to prevent the defrosting plums from adhering to the bottom of the pan. The bride went off to defrost herself and I stood and stirred. They sort of look likes cuts of chook, don't they. We had to slowly let them defrost in that pan until they were melted. They then were poured into the passe-vite for milling. The sieve plate at the bottom of the passe-vite has holes large enough to let some skin bits and plum flesh through. It is for us a necessity to have these bits in our jams, as they add flavour. At this stage, it looks pretty awful, doesn't it. I turned the twirl-scraper until the load was completely ground through the sieve. Madam returned just as it was time to stop the milling. All the juice and most of the fibres had been pressed through the sieve. I held the passe-vite up and she scraped the mass off the bottom of the sieve. The whole contents were then dumped back into the waiting pan on the stove with the pectin-sugar mix, to be brought again to a boil. After doing a few thickness tests, it was ready to jar. 7½ jars is what we got out of the ~1800 gram processed plum halves. It is always such a good feeling when the jamming is done. A feeling of accomplishment, know what I mean? Hey...hang on a minute! First a little quality control --Dutch rusk with a bit of jam on a traditional boerenbond plate. I made the rusk and then went to get my fone to take a pic. When I returned The rusk looked like this! That's not how I left it! Is nothing safe in this house!? What the hail!--to quote Toni. As I lodged my protests I saw her squint-eyed grinning countenance with crumbs around her mug...like the cat that ate the canary. She just gage the Dutch hand sign that it was tasty. "Tch!" I rolled my eyes and said, "What are you like". the hand gesture looks like this----A flat hand moved frontwards and backwards along side a cocked hear and an expression on the face....sometimes saying '" mmmmm" and the word, Lekker. See the micro-short vid with sound.
Hmmm....Sjoerd....this post reminds me that I have blueberries from last year in the freezer to jam up! Great post!
Hahaha, I can picture her diving into that freezer of yours. Being short myself I totally relate. Your plum jam looks yummy indeed.
I haven't had any plums for jelly in years.....time to find some at the grocery store. Yours looks fantastic.
Well Toni, it can be very tasty...but I have found that it has to do with the plum type too. For me some tastes better in jam than others., but then I don't smoke and can taste perhaps a bit TOO good. hahaha.
