An unexpected harvest

While blackberry picking one evening last week, Brent noticed that among the brambles towering over our head, just out of our reach, were plums! Bonus! We got a few, but lamented those we couldn't quite reach.

We picked our nightly gallon of blackberries and heading home, I pointed out another plum tree, just around the corner.This is when my Dear Husband says "Stop!"

He jumped out  of the truck, over the ditch, braved the mosquitoes out hunting in the approaching dusk and quickly picked me 4.6 pounds of an unexpected harvest--all while wearing a full arm cast on his right arm!

The next day, while picking more blackberries after my morning drive to Lynden, I hatched my plot.

I brought my little household step ladder with me when I picked him up from work. We headed back to the first plum tree,  picked our way, carefully, through waist high grass full of thistles to the back side of the blackberry brambles and found not only one plum tree but a little grove of them. Unfortunately, most of the plums had already been found by other harvest-hands, as evidenced by the already trampled grass. We picked all we could reach, with our little ladder, and came home that time with 6.4 pounds of plump purple little plums!

Tiny but flavorful plums. (I added a washed quarter for size reference)

The next day I searched the internet for recipes using plums and came across several for Asian style plum sauce. Those recipes planted a seed, so I headed into the kitchen to get busy. Using the simularities between the different recipes I found as a base, I started cooking down the plums. With the taste-tester help of SonMySon, I kept adusting the spices and ingredients until we had it just perfect! The first three pounds of chopped plums netted me three pints of my new Aizian-style Plum Sauce. (At Aizia's request, the recipe will be titled using her spelling!)   The sauce was wonderful atop a bowl of jasmine rice and moist shredded pork! A big hit we will be enjoying regularly!

 All my begging for more plums on FreeCycle and Craigslist has let me empty handed so I am tickled that Jannie was able to find another source of plums for me!  At, of all places, a nursery in Eastern Washington that sells fruit tree stock to nurserymen.