Sunday, September 13, 2009

Far too many plums

Why oh why do cookery writers think a recipe that uses a half kilo of plum is good to use up any surfeit? Particularly this year? We had a cold winter and plum trees, particularly Victoria plums need a period of dormancy.
My Victoria plum is groaning with plums. Thankfully my husband has discovered the joy of making chutney and my youngest is making jam. I have done crumble, made plum gin, frozen bags of it, used them in barter, and still the tree is full. I need recipes that call for 5 pounds or more.
And plums are not my favourite fruit...but as the tree has produced so many, I feel a duty to use them up.

3 comments:

Carol Townend said...

Michelle, you might be able to answer a mystery. Someone once told me that the 'HP' of HP sauce stood for Hot Plum and it was made with tons of plums. It that true??? This friend once made a hot plum sauce and she said it tasted EXACTLY like HP Sauce!

Michelle Styles said...

Having looked it. http://www.hpsauce.co.uk/

HP stands for Houses of Parliament. A quick thinking grocer came up with the name when he was trying to get a man he was in arrears to to invest in the sauce. He said that he had heard a faint rumour that it was served in the Houses of Parliament. As far as I can tell HP sauce has no plums...

Unknown said...

How about some plum wine?
chicken or pork in plum sauce, plum ice cream, plum cobbler ice cream (Idea swiped from Bluebell ice cream's "Southern Blackberry Cobbler Ice cream), plum cider