A Plate of Plums

Don't these plums look delicious? Can't you just taste them? In fact, Victoria Plums are among the sweetest we have ever eaten. Usually when you bite into a plum, the first thing that hits your taste buds is an instant of sweetness before the sourness takes over and so it goes on--sweet, sour, sweet, sour--until the plum is gone. Not so with Victoria Plums, you get sweet with just enough of a hint of sour that you know it's a plum. These most certainly don't fit the Scots term "soor plooms." I have now picked 13 of these wonders. Yesterday afternoon I was working under the plum tree. Looking up, I counted over 40 plums. Amazing!

Speaking of home-grown fruit, the apple tree, which we thought had only one apple on it, appears to have at least two. They are both still green although they will turn quite rosy. In fact, that's how I knew the first year that we even had apples: something red in the otherwise green tree caught my eye and when I looked more closely, I saw an apple and then another and another and another. I think we got about 24 apples off the tree that year (autumn 2004). Last year there were a few. I don't think we'll be so fortunate this year, however.

Yesterday afternoon I spent quite a while pulling up the spent Alstroemaria stalks that fill up the ground underneath the little plum tree and it's wee companion, a double cherry. Then I cut down the globe thistles. The Asters and the Polygonum are still blooming so I'll leave them alone for now but this whole bed really needs a good forking over. We've never done it and it has become obvious that is what is needed. All these plants are perennials and self-seeding. The soil is probably pretty depleted of nutrients (although you wouldn't know it from the output) and there is no doubt that the 3 main flower crops (Alstromarias, Asters, and Polygonum) need to be severely reduced in number for they spill out onto the lawn and walkways.

Here's a question for you: How do you make it rain? Answer: Wash the car and spend two hours watering the garden. While I was pulling up the Alstromarias yesterday afternoon, Don took a load of garden waste to the skip in Crieff. While he was in the area, he stopped at the hot steam carwash and also got a hot wax application. Meanwhile, I had hooked up the sprinkler to the hose and, moving it every 10 or 15 minutes, gave all the 'new' plants a gentle but good soak. I even said to Don before he went to the skip "Watch me make it rain." When he came back and told me he'd had the car washed, he said "Now it'll rain for sure." At about 9:30 last night, just as he was on his way home from the meeting in Crieff, it began to rain and it kept up steadily until sometime after we fell asleep. It's gorgeous today, bright and sunny. The temp is supposed to get up to 71 (it's already 68). What a summer!

Don it out playing golf with Gordon and I'm about to go into the studio and see what I can create.

Tonight I'm trying my hand at making confit of duck for the first time ever. In fact, it'll be the first time I've ever cooked duck at all. We bought duck legs at Tescos the other night and on Tuesday I set them to marinating in garlic, herbs, and sea salt. I have some fresh cherries to make a cherry-port sauce to go with. I'll make some potatoes dauphinoise and we'll have a veggie and a salad. Maybe even an apple cake for pudding. Last night we had a vegetarian meal which we made together: large mushrooms stuffed with sauteed julienned sweet red pepper and eggplant with garlic, red onions, herbs, and cheese and then topped with cheese and baked in the oven. That was served with spinach-cheese-rice. I thought we'd need something sweeter to counterbalance those two dishes so made a carrot salad, another recipe I got from the novel, Keeping Up With Magda by Isla Dewar (whom Helen and I saw at the Edinburgh Book Festival last Friday). Here's the recipe:

Grate some carrots (amount depends on how many you're feeding). You can throw in some raisins or currants if you wish (I did). Drizzle over some drippy honey. Add a wee bit of balsalmic vinegar and good quality extra virgin olive oil. The recipe actually called for fresh coriander but I didn't have any so I shook on some ground dried coriander with a little bit of freshly ground sea salt and mixed peppercorns. Mix vigorously and serve. Mmmm.