And in December, you'd give your first borne child for a fresh, juicy plum! Right now, I'm overwhelmed with raspberries. I sure am making a lot of friends with them though...

I deal with large fruit crops by running the fruit through various machines for puree and juice.

In this case, you would have to eat a lot of plum pudding or sauce, and drink plum juice. It all freezes well.

Donate to Food Bank. Call first to determine if they can use what you have or can offer alternatives.

Plum sauce is so good on oatmeal, pancakes, pork, duck, you name it.

Here's one of our favorites made with purple plums. The recipe is very forgiving, but if you're canning you must keep the vinegar in it. It also works to pit plums and freeze to make later in winter. Works fine with frozen jalapenos, too. Depending on your heat tolerance you can make it more spicy using hotter peppers. As our children grew their taste for spicy increased, so we made it hotter in later years; however, we don't prefer it that hot. This is the original recipe with just a hint of spice & not a hot sauce.

Asian Plum Sauce

Combine:
2 cups brown sugar
1 cup white sugar
1 cup apple cider vinegar
3/4 cup finely chopped onion
2 T. mustard seeds
2 T. green chili peppers, finely chopped
1 T. sea salt
1-2 cloves garlic, minced
1-2 pieces ginger root, 1/4" x 1"

Add and bring to boil:
10 cups prepared plums (washed, pitted, chopped)

Boil gently for 1 - 1 3/4 hours.
Puree with a handheld blender.
Can or freeze.
Can with 1/4" head space & process for 20 minutes.
Makes 4 pints.

Enjoy it on meats, in stir fry and as a dipping sauce for egg rolls.

Corrine

I hope you have some freezer space, I freeze plums. I don't do any preparation and use freezer bags. I cook them, blend up with a stick blender, and use unflavored gelatin, stevia for sweetening, and Almond extract for added flavor to make a healthy gelatin dessert.

Plum wine is divine! Winemaker Magazine has a great article for making wine from stone fruits. If you've never done it before, give it a whirl...sounds like you have nothing to lose. I'm making my first batch of peach wine. Still fermenting, but it smells wonderful. If you've never made wine before, stop in at your local brewing/winemaking shop and they can set you up with a fermentation bucket, a secondary glass jug/carboy, a fermentation airlock, and some info to get you started. Once you start, you'll be hooked!

http://winemakermag.com/component/resource/article/4-Feature/937-stone-fruit-wines

Great responses, all. Thank you!

The food banks are overwhelmed right now with ripe fruit. They did offer to take our unripe plums, so might unload some that way. We've already overloaded our friends, neighbors and co-workers (dottyinduncan, yours must love, love, love you!) and we only have a combo frig/freezer with no space for freezing. I'll try a batch of Corrine's excellent sounding plum sauce and thank you, oh, thank you to GreenTart for the wine recipe -- that's exactly what I was hoping for! If the wine-making goes well, will see about making eau de vie out of next year's harvest.

Again,my thanks to all!

Plum happy now,

Rain