Dear friends, text will follow later, when I am feeling a little less poorly. I am irked by this poorly feeling, for up until tonight, it was a quiet, bittersweet weekend, made sweeter by plums. The dark purple prune plums, a varietal known as Long John, have been baked into plum cake, which sits in the kitchen, waiting for Lloyd and me. The rest are for eating out of hand, plunging into your mouth as soon as you realize that they're just about to trip over the line of overripeness, these fat little beauties. The green-yellow ones are greengages, floral and buttery with a flesh like amber. The red ones are Elephant Hearts, tart-skinned, vaguely banana-scented and with a vivid magenta flesh. I devour bags of these every summer. And this morning, before my vague malaise set in, I put my energy to good use: those five pounds of damsons that came home with me last weekend were finally turned into damson jam. Or at least it was meant to be damson jam: quality control revealed that it had actually been cooked into damson butter, thick, heady and gorgeous. I probably should have pureed the whole mixture, to smooth out the skins, but there was something about the faint crunch of plum skin between my teeth that made the whole thing so much more captivating. So we have ten jars of not-quite-jam, not-quite-butter, resting nicely in the pantry. Recipes, for both the cake and the jam, will follow as soon as I get my silly act together. Thanking you in advance for your patience.
