the wanton plum and the loose-minded apricot, and their prim prodigy
I think my plum and apricot hybridized this year. The apricots and plums were both milder in flavor. The apricots never got to the melt-in-your mouth stage. The plums mostly have a dapply, pluot-looking skin. They're right next to each other. Most years they overlap in bloom time, but this year they overlapped a lot more. I keep hurting my head trying to figure out whether the F1 generation is the fruit on the original tree or the fruit from the tree that comes from that fruit. This is because I am vague.
Plum and apricot taxonomy: order rosales, family rosaceae, subfamily prunoidiae, genus prunus, subgenius Bob subgenus prunus, and _then_ section prunus for plum and section armeniaca for apricot, my plum being salicina X "Santa Rosa" and my apricot being "Blenheim."
Anyways, I'm up to my eyebrows in plums. So far:
1 quart of dried plum wafers (not prunes, which are prune plums dried whole)
2 quarts of canned plums in apple juice
6 half-pints of low-sugar plum jelly made from the leftover plum/apple juice, low-sugar pectin, and sucralose-sugar blend
and buckets and buckets to be made into one five-gallon carboy of wine: I believe that doubling the batch was part of my problem in the past (we're using montpelier yeast this year. Ellie at Portable Potables says we should ferment the wine dry, then kill the yeast with campden tablets and introduce enough sugar to sweeten the wine to taste.)
and I'm going to make Chinese plum sauce, and plum chutney, but only a little bit of each.
Notes about these things.
If you measure out four quarts of raw plums, plus about a pint or so extra, and you do a hot pack, you will end up with two quarts of plums and about 12 oz extra, and 5 cups extra juice, if you heat the plums in about a quart and a half of apple juice. And the jelly you make from the extra juice will not taste quite plummy enough but will be a very pretty color. If you use one and a half cups of sucralose and two and a half cups of sugar to five cups of juice it will be about the right sweetness but the sucralose-bitter is a bit more prominent than perfect -- not enough to ruin the jelly, though: but next (mast) year, if you do this, (1) use eight quarts of plums for the canned plum stage and a quart of apple juice: (2) cook the plums a minute less: (3)use one cup of sucralose to three cups of sugar.
Four dehydrator trays filled very tight with .3 cm or thereabouts slices of plums makes a quart of dried plum wafers.
Also, we're getting a new refrigerator today so I have to make the house navigable (i.e., move laundry and furniture and clean the old refigerator out). It has glass shelves, supposedly sturdy parts, and to please the nice fellow, it's black.
It's Day 14, and the last two days I have been losing my focus, and I bounced up three pounds, which leaves me at a 19 pound loss (4 since Day 1), but grr. Today I will struggle to regain focus. It's hard to handle all those plums without eating them, though. And I keep thinking of sandwiches, though I can't honestly say I crave them exactly.
Oh, and: a thickish letter from Prague arrived yesterday. In Czechlish! With information! And a formal invitation!!! To take a test and have an interview. He must be at the testing place at 8:00n in the morning on Sept. 12. That's less than a month away. . . . (not enough time for his job to pay for his plane ticket and hostel stay, and the money he's getting from the Shadowrun people won't be enough and dog knows when it will come, so I guess we're it again)
Plum and apricot taxonomy: order rosales, family rosaceae, subfamily prunoidiae, genus prunus, subgenius Bob subgenus prunus, and _then_ section prunus for plum and section armeniaca for apricot, my plum being salicina X "Santa Rosa" and my apricot being "Blenheim."
Anyways, I'm up to my eyebrows in plums. So far:
1 quart of dried plum wafers (not prunes, which are prune plums dried whole)
2 quarts of canned plums in apple juice
6 half-pints of low-sugar plum jelly made from the leftover plum/apple juice, low-sugar pectin, and sucralose-sugar blend
and buckets and buckets to be made into one five-gallon carboy of wine: I believe that doubling the batch was part of my problem in the past (we're using montpelier yeast this year. Ellie at Portable Potables says we should ferment the wine dry, then kill the yeast with campden tablets and introduce enough sugar to sweeten the wine to taste.)
and I'm going to make Chinese plum sauce, and plum chutney, but only a little bit of each.
Notes about these things.
If you measure out four quarts of raw plums, plus about a pint or so extra, and you do a hot pack, you will end up with two quarts of plums and about 12 oz extra, and 5 cups extra juice, if you heat the plums in about a quart and a half of apple juice. And the jelly you make from the extra juice will not taste quite plummy enough but will be a very pretty color. If you use one and a half cups of sucralose and two and a half cups of sugar to five cups of juice it will be about the right sweetness but the sucralose-bitter is a bit more prominent than perfect -- not enough to ruin the jelly, though: but next (mast) year, if you do this, (1) use eight quarts of plums for the canned plum stage and a quart of apple juice: (2) cook the plums a minute less: (3)use one cup of sucralose to three cups of sugar.
Four dehydrator trays filled very tight with .3 cm or thereabouts slices of plums makes a quart of dried plum wafers.
Also, we're getting a new refrigerator today so I have to make the house navigable (i.e., move laundry and furniture and clean the old refigerator out). It has glass shelves, supposedly sturdy parts, and to please the nice fellow, it's black.
It's Day 14, and the last two days I have been losing my focus, and I bounced up three pounds, which leaves me at a 19 pound loss (4 since Day 1), but grr. Today I will struggle to regain focus. It's hard to handle all those plums without eating them, though. And I keep thinking of sandwiches, though I can't honestly say I crave them exactly.
Oh, and: a thickish letter from Prague arrived yesterday. In Czechlish! With information! And a formal invitation!!! To take a test and have an interview. He must be at the testing place at 8:00n in the morning on Sept. 12. That's less than a month away. . . . (not enough time for his job to pay for his plane ticket and hostel stay, and the money he's getting from the Shadowrun people won't be enough and dog knows when it will come, so I guess we're it again)