This is the year of beach plums. Rather than having to fight off deer and other foragers for a slight handful of these tasty fruits, they are in obscene abundance. Every bush has clumps of these deep purple pitted fruits waiting for the taking. And take I do. Grabbing a bunch, like so many grapes 🍇, I chew them carefully spitting out the large pits with machine gun frequency. Ambrosia.
But in what has become a tradition, Juana and I are visiting her sister, Rosana (@artbyrosana) to make jam. Juana and I have collected over a quart of blackberries that Olivia has missed, and Rosana has done the same with beach plums.
After we arrive at Fire Island, the kitchen is turned into a jam factory. The beach plums are put through a food mill to remove the pits. The resulting mass is then mixed with the blackberries and lightly boiled down. A equal amount of sugar is then added to the deep dark plum mixture and heated some more. After a bit of a decanting process, this year’s harvest is complete and ready to be divided up among us. Yum 😋.
