I had a collection of plums I had received as part of my last Bountiful Basket. They were not yet ripe so I let them set on the counter top a few days and then threw them in the refrigerator. Out of sight, out of mind. Today I decided that if I could find a recipe that I could adjust for my very tiny batch of plums I was going to make them into jam. I got out my old canning books and it was as I remembered I would need a bushel, or at least a peck of plums for any of those tried and true recipes from Ball or Kerr. So I headed to where we all go now the internet. I found my answer, an 100% scalable recipe for my plums.
Plum Jam Recipe
1:1 ratio, chopped plums to sugar. Cook 5 minutes and can.
Ok it wasn’t that simple. I did not expect it to be that easy. I had to cook it longer than 5 minutes to get my sheeting off the spoon test to work. I suspected such would be true at my altitude. No biggie. I then decided that I would finish my 3 half-pints off in a water bath since things never get as hot as they need to when water boils at 198 degrees. New problem. I no longer had my hot water canner. I had given it away after living in Montana for 5 years and not using it. I threw a cotton dish cloth in the bottom of a tall soup pot, brought my water to a boil and put my precious cargo in. Twenty minutes latter I pulled my precious cargo out.
It was a wonderful flashback moment of the joys of when I canned all the seasons bounty.
