Start with relatives that have 100 year old plum trees in their backyard.
Or you can do what I did and marry into a family that has 100 year old plum trees.
After picking a ton of purple plums decide instead to hop a fence,
cross the neighbors yard,
and slide down a hill covered in poky, scratchy, evil bushes
while clinging desperately to the wild plum tree
that your husband and father-in-law call a
Potawatomi Plum.
(Which really do taste amazing)
By the way, this must be done in shorts and flip flops,
Your favorite, slightly dressy ones that feel less grubby than
the cheap plastic ones you got on sale last summer.
Now, still clinging to that tree, pull off as many plumbs as you can
which you will place in a cheap plastic grocery sack.
This sack will break on you two or three times spilling your plums
irretrievably into the poky, scratchy, evil bushes your are balancing on precariously
Do not get a new methoid of carrying your plums despite this on going failure
frustration is part of the process,
as are the squished plums that are now making the ground beneath you
sticky and dangerously slippery.
When you have 4-5 half filled second hand grocery sacks
Feel free to fall the rest of the way down the hill of poky, scratchy, evil bushes on your butt
plums in hand.
When you finish your legs should look like this.....
Give half of your plums to your in-laws and head home.
Separate out the good plums from the bad and research recipes online.
Decide that the idea of pitting and peeling plums sucks,
dump the plums (3 1/2 pounds) into a pot with 1/2 cup of apple juice, a teaspoon of cinnamon and boil.
Next smash the whole hot mess through a stainer until you have yummy pulp.
Next mix in sugar at a rate of 6 cups of pulpy mess to 8 cups of sugar.
Place the surgery mash back on the stove to boil.
Re-read the recipe on the the back on the sure-jell box and use for favorite curse words to express your feelings that you should have added the sure-jell before the sugar and their is nothing you can do about it.
Throw the sure-jell in any way, what the hell. You spent way too much time smashing crap through a strainer to throw it all in the trash, worst case scenario you can call whole mess syrup right?
Finish cooking and processing the jam as directed on the package, even though you have never "processed" jam by pouring it into a boiled jar, screwing on the lid, and flipping the whole thing over for 5 minutes. ( it works by the way, who knew?)
Hope for the best, plan to make waffles.
Check out the stuff the next day. Be stunned and amazed that the whole thing worked.
Hold it up to the light and admire the color, take pictures and feel like they do not do things jusitice.
Bag the plans to make waffles, you are a jam making rock star!
