Another huge basket of plums today. This is the basket AFTER I gave my neighbour a big bag full of them.

The trees that are cropping right now are called Opal. They are supposed to crop at the end of July/beg of Aug, but everything is 4-6 weeks late this year.

This is a typical branch on the tree….. laden! We have 2 Opal trees and there are so many more to come. And then when they have finished, we have 2 Victoria trees, and they have just as many plums on them.

There was a suspicious amount of buzzing as I was picking these. Probably wasps, although I didn’t actually spot any. They are a real pain in a plum tree with ripe fruits.

I tried drying some last night. I bought a dehydrator in a mad gadget lustful moment many years ago – haven’t used it much 🙁 . What I would really like with the dried ones is like mi-cuit tomatoes, but I am a bit scared that my lovely crop will go all horrible and mouldy. The ones I tried are pretty dry, and taste lovely. They will work very well in baking, as a snack and as lovely sweet/sour tang in a savoury dish, like couscous for instance.

I am going to have to bite the bullet and try some and hope I get it right.

I will make some jam tomorrow to have over the winter and round until the next crop is ready.

I will freeze some, although I will have to stone them as 10 or so in a big basket will have a maggot in, wouldn’t want to bake one of those into a crumble, yeargh.

And I think I may get my preserving jars out and do some preserving. I’ll have to get some more seals tho as I haven’t done any for years now and they will have perished.

So lots to do with them – still looking for savoury ways to use them tho. I tried something yesterday which I will blog about shortly, and although it tasted lovely, it was still like eating a pudding, even tho it was supposed to be main course.