More Plums anyone...?

Yep I'm still on about plums.....Jelly in fact! Jelly is similar to Jam but without the chunks of fruit and should be clear not cloudy.

The Black Doris Plum - what can be said about the Black Doris Plum? It's delicious!

We heavily pruned our tree when we first came down so we don't get quite so many at the moment, however......once the Tones prunes the Red plum tree in April/May when the leaves drop, hopefully giving the Black Doris more sunshine and space. We expect to get a heap more next year. We'd better! Pruning of course may cause the red plum's to be smaller and for there to be less of them but hey we have two trees now so I'm happy to forfeit some towards the greater cause.....more Black Doris.

For me the Black Doris make a really yummy jelly which I use amongst other things to baste the Christmas Ham before putting in the oven - the flavour is to die for (just saying). Anyway, I'm hoping that this weekend will be the weekend that we strip the Black Doris plum tree bare of her delicious juicy morsels - I can't wait!

The Black Doris Plum - my favourite.

Freshly sliced....don't they look delicious?

Making jelly with the Black Doris plums.

Left overnight to drain, we get left with just the juice.....almost there.

End result!

As I said yesterday this year I've been a bit more adventurous with the fruit and have tried a few different recipes. It's the first year I've made red plum jelly though and it's very nice indeed, I love the colour when I hold it up to the sun. It's amazing how many different shades of red and pink there are. If I don't label them sometimes I can't tell what flavour it is, whether it's plum, quince or strawberry guava. Makes it fun for the Tones though as he is the jelly connoisseur of the household. Sometimes I don't tell him what flavour I have put on his snack and make him guess - silly really as he says he likes all of them, just makes it fun for me!

Red Plum Jelly

After cooking the fruit, I leave it draining through the jelly bag overnight, the next day I measure the liquid and return it to the pan adding equal amounts of sugar and then I boil the shite out of it for approximately 45 mins or until setting point is reached, easy really. In some cases I have too much liquid and as I like to make my jelly in small batches I freeze half the batch in 1 litre bags in icecream containers. Cooking in small batches ensures that we keep the flavour and quality of the fruit and I get a consistent jelly each time. Then during the 'off' season when you can't get plums, we can always have plum jelly as I can grab a bag from the freezer and then complete the final procedure and voila - fresh plum jelly. Works everytime and the flavour and consistency is as if I've cooked the fruit that day - perfect!

Extra fruit juice to be frozen for future use.

Also, plum jelly heated a little in the microwave makes a wonderful sauce over ice cream or apple pie. Use your imagination, jelly is not just for scones and toast. You can make jelly out of just about any fruit. For me though, the Black Doris plum is a favourite, but my absolute ultimate is most definitely Passionfruit!

Plums, plums and more plums......

Well, that's two plum trees finished, just one more to go now.......the baby tree, which didn't have many plums this year, but it did have more than last year so every year it gets stronger, it finished last week really, I think the birdies got most of them and they were teeny little plums any way, really sweet though, I look forward to it maturing over the next few years.

The gorgeously huge Satsuma tree is finally finished, we can not get to any more without risking the Tones falling from the tree and that definitely would not be a pretty sight. We tried hard to get them all though, the Tones had started sawing branches off in order to get to the plums left, he was pretty determined not to let the birds have any more!

He tried all manner of ways to get to the big buggers and some of them were huge, first there was the butterfly net, this works really well, then it was the ladder with the butterfly net, then it was climbing the actual tree with the butterfly net - he said he felt like he was 10 years old again, except not quite as agile and certainly not as fearless. In frustration he would shake the branch and they'd fall from the sky and split upon impact with the ground. I'd groan and complain that that wasn't nice, it was a waste and could he be more careful - ha ....as if, he was getting pretty irritated with me by that stage as each time it happened I'd be there picking them up and putting them in my basket saying 'that's a split one, that's another split one etc., oh careful....nup that's another one'......hee hee, I soon learnt to shut the f up otherwise he'd down tools! No sense of humour - hee hee.

The 'Tones' getting ready to get the last of the plums from the Satsuma tree.

Here he is up the ladder with the butterfly net.

The basket of plums.

Just showing off now.

You can see how big some of them were and they were so juicy. Co-ordinated toe nail polish!

Cooking ready to become Red Plum Jelly.

My favourite preserving cookbook - I just love this book, so inspiring.

So, this year we have so far had, Black Doris Plum Jelly (with much more to come), Red Plum Jelly, Plum and Frangipani Tarts, Plum Fruit Paste and today we are cooking up a storm in the kitchen with Plum Sauce and the house smells divine, even the child is liking the smell - now that hasn't happened before when making savoury!

Tomorrow, I might just show off some more.

Doing a happy dance.....

Oh my goodness.....I'm doing my happy dance today!!

It's a small thing but a big thing, if you know what I mean.

A bit of background to bring you up to speed, so you can understand why this 'small thing' is such a 'BIG THING' for me.

As mentioned in my earlier post (my only post so far), we live on approximately 1 acre of land and it is all garden, apart from the dwellings of which there are a few, predominately our house, a three bedroom cottage with huge potential to be something quite awesome, if we ever get around to it, a large seven car workshop which also contains a small garden studio for guests (completely rebuilt by us) and a hothouse, a double garage which stores the ride on mower and garden tools etc and lastly a one bedroom self contained cottage with it's own gardens and decking (my mother-in-law, the Nana lives here with her pesky pooch Honeymeads).

Now.....sometime ago 'The Nana', who is 86 decided she was going to help in our overgrown garden by looking after the fence line nearest the driveway, all good says my husband (the Tones) she can't do any harm along there. Pffhaha...who says she can't do any harm, I bet she can says I. Alas, I was being a smart arse and not actually expecting her to be able to do any harm either except...........she did do harm, she did so much harm that I actually cried real tears. To say I over reacted with my tears was probably fair in hindsight but at the time I was devastated and just thinking about it now really pisses me off and makes me want to stamp my feet and make hideous bawling noises. NOOOOOOOOO was my cry. She's only gone and cut my 60 odd year old passionfruit off at it's knees, I couldn't believe it, the vine had been prolific over the past few years. It was a joy to behold, it was so huge and the pine trees of the shelter belt carried it well, it was safe to produce gorgeous passionfruit to fill the whole town, it was reduced to a stump! WTF I cried at the Tones, why did she do it? The poor guy, as if he could've known, as if he could've prevented it happening, I was completely irrational in my distress, I do admit that. I marched into her house and asked her straight out...'What did the passionfruit do to you?' 'Oh oh, I did kill it didn't I? I didn't mean to.' Well of course she didn't mean to, I knew that much, she just went crazy with the clippers, I got that, but it still pissed me off for days, weeks afterwards.

 

This is the dead bits of the vine that I couldn't reach to get down from the shelter belt, makes me want to sookie-la-la every time I look at it.

Another view of the 'broken' vine above the banana palms....sniff sniff

My precious 60 odd year old passionfruit vine, look how thick that 'trunk' is, not that it is a trunk but you know, clearly it's old to have a trunk like that!

However, doing my happy dance now, because after months of me checking it and checking it, willing it back into life, planting replacement vines in other areas of the garden only for them to die, the Tones telling me to 'get over it', it has reshooted, RESHOOTED, yipee, yahoo, whoo hoo, I am a happy little camper now. Doin' the dance, I am SO doing the dance I've driven them mad over the last 24 hours, so so happy. My plant, my favourite flavour in the world with the most beautiful flower is living on.....come next summer, 

I WILL HAVE PASSIONFRUIT again.

Ta Da!.....woo woo, I'm dancing, I'm dancing.

Hmmmmm, I can taste passionfruit flummery or passionfruit icecream or yoghurt or cake or something, anything.....maybe a sweet sauce for pouring over icecream - now I'm talking!

Oh my lord, I think I'll just eat it straight from the vine!

Yep, straight from the vine.

Thanks for stopping by.

2013 ..... A new beginning

Today is the start of something new.....another attempt at a blog!

This time of year is very inspiring for me, my garden which is situated in the Western Bay of Plenty in New Zealand is always abundant and we eat fresh fruit like kings. We are located in the North Island on the east coast and we are not called the 'Bay of Plenty' for nothing. We have bumper crops of everything every year - I love it, the cooking possibilities are endless!

Approximately 1 hour, 45mins from Auckland, New Zealand's largest city, we are surrounded by a kiwi fruit orchard on three sides and a state highway along the front, north of the mural township of 'Katikati' and close to northern reaches of the Tauranga Harbour. We have close to an acre of land which has many many different fruit trees. From mandarins along the front fence line to peach trees along the rear, scattered between are grapefruit, tangerines, lemons, strawberry guava's, quince, apples, feijoa's, figs, tamarillo's, nectarines, plums, banana's (yes, banana's) and locquots (not sure how to spell the last one but they are those orangy/yellow fruit with big brown seeds in them), oh and a Black American Walnut tree which is the large tree you see covering the driveway. I'm sure there are other's that I have forgotten to mention, in some cases there are more than one. We also have about 6 different grape vines throughout, rich dark purple plums around the front deck out the front to crisp white grapes on the front fence and in the vegie garden.

To get us started I thought I'd just post some pics of a couple of my favourite places and trees within the garden.

One of our favourite places to sit, it has changed a bit since this pic was taken, the seat has had to go as it rotted away and there is a huge pale pink rose behind it.

Again, this seat has gone and the garden is much much fuller with flowers.

This only flowers for such a short time but it is stunningly beautiful.

The grapes on the front deck, we sit under this vine and feel like we are in Italy or some where exotic, this was taken as the leaves were starting to fall.

One of the banana palms...these are 'lady finger' banana's and very sweet, I tend to use them in baking as they can sometimes be a bit dry.

Well, I hope you'll come back and keep me inspired. Thank you for taking the time.

Nannette