Saturday, September 26, 2015

Well That's Plum Crazy!

We have some pretty awesome neighbors.  This past weekend they brought over an overflowing bucket full of plums and a bag full of apples from their fruit trees.  We really like plums.  This was not just an ice cream bucket or small pail, but a 5 gallon bucket.  The girls were super excited.  We all took one, okay two, off the top and ate them.  Then looked back at the bucket and realized that it didn't look like we had even touched it. Some quick math lead to the conclusion that this bucket of plums would take us about 134 days to finish if we each ate 2 per day.
My mother is excellent at canning foods, dehydrating them, and finding all sorts of ways to use every ounce of nutrition with little to no waste.  Unfortunately, I failed to pay much attention when these activities we happening, we moved 800 miles away this summer, and I had no canning supplies.  Thank goodness for pinterest!  We spent Saturday afternoon researching plum recipes and found all sorts of plum butters, plum jams, plum preserves, then it's like the recipe jumped out at us - PLUM BBQ Sauce!  WHAT?  Is that really a thing?  It sounded weird enough that it had to be good.  We purchased our supplies and prepared for the adventure.
Sunday right after church we punished the two oldest girls by making them pit the entire bucket, minus about 10 more plums that we decided to eat.  The youngest child helped me make apple lemon jelly, apple pie, and a jar of apple sauce.  When the plums were all pitted we realized that we had WAY more than what we needed for the recipe so we decided to triple the recipe, we were clearly feeling pretty confident.  Even with the triple batch we still had enough plums to make a plum breakfast bar recipe and freeze ten bags full of plums for baking projects later this fall.
We started cooking the plums for the BBQ sauce and so far all that was added was a tad bit of sugar and touch of cinnamon.  It smelled amazing.  Then it was time to start adding garlic, cumin, chili powder, red pepper, onion salt, black pepper, and other spices and we all looked at each other for confirmation.  We knew there was no turning back once we dumped that mixture in.  Within a matter of minutes the aroma changed from sweet to savory.
This was one crazy week full of greatness.  We ended up with 8 jars of the most amazing BBQ sauce ever, 3 jars of jelly, 1 jar of apple sauce, and the best part of the whole thing....   WE FINALLY FOUND THE GARAGE DOOR OPENER.  It was in the fridge inside of the butter holder.  That seems completely logical, I am sure one of us put it there on purpose.  It was probably even me since I am the only one that can't actually reach the place it is normally kept, but they can't prove it so....  :)

2 comments:

  1. You guys are so amazing, I love your adventures and enjoy reading about them. Let me know when you try the plum BBQ I would love to know how well it works.

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    1. We tried it that night on chicken and it was fantastic! We will try it on pork soon too :)

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