One of the few fringe benefits of keeping a food blog is that friends assume you’d like some of the plums and pears ripening on their trees. That would be a yes. These particular trees are mossy, knobby quadragenarians with plums so perfectly ripe they have an aura. That’s why I’m embarrassed to admit what an amateur operation we ran. The technique was to shake the tree, duck as the fruit pelted down, and gather up the unscathed ones. There were enough for a few big sacks; next time we’ll be prepared with a picker, or at least helmets. There’s plenty for fresh eating and plenty for giving away and as we speak I’m trying to figure out how to use the rest.
If you’re in Seattle and can’t use everything from your overloaded fruit tree, give Lettuce Link a call at 206.633.0224. They’ll gladly pick your tree for the food bank.
Check out more recent posts on dried Italian plums and plum jams and compotes.
Eat Local Northwest 
7 comments
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September 30, 2008 at 9:46 pm
Hank
Make wine out of those! See that bloom on them? Perfect for wine. I made a batch of Damson plum wine years ago that was fantastic! You’ll need about 20 pounds to do a decent batch, but if you want to, lemme know and I will send you a recipe.
September 14, 2009 at 10:54 am
Ben
Hank,
I’m looking to make some plum wine this week. Could you forward me the recipe you used?
Thanks!!
Ben
benjaminberman@gmail.com
September 30, 2008 at 11:12 pm
audrey
OK, wine wasn’t at all on my radar but now that moonshine’s legal, maybe I’ll just have to do that. And yeah, the powdery bloom on the plums was a wondrous thing. You could pretty well lift my fingerprints off the fruit.
October 1, 2008 at 11:44 am
poppyandsally
Our ancient Italian plum tree blew over in the big December storm a year and a half ago. Bog loss, major backyard transformation. Anyway, one thing we did was make plum butter and if you have a crockpot it’s easy. Cook plums on low heat for a couple of days or until you decide they’re ready.
Plum wine would have been awesome. Next time.
By the way, your plum picking method is intuitive, maybe not so crazy – many grapes are harvested with mechanical ‘shakers’.
Sally
October 3, 2008 at 9:34 pm
all dried up « Eat Local Northwest
[…] an option so we kicked off food preservation season by firing up the oven. First to go in were the Italian plums, cracked in half and pitted, so pretty you might think life was a cooking show. Twelve hours later […]
October 3, 2008 at 9:44 pm
audrey
Such a sad thing when a tree goes down. I’ll be interested to hear what you choose to replace the plum tree. And I love the plum butter idea, it sounds so easy and deluxe.
November 2, 2008 at 5:23 pm
a year of local « Eat Local Northwest
[…] year of baking bread from just flour, water, and salt. A year of salads picked from the garden. Of preserving plums and pepper jelly and experiments with sunchoke bisque. A year of learning to use every edible part […]