Plums A-plenty

Our current home is surrounded by plum trees. Problem is, I don't much like fresh plums. I pulled out my canning books and scoured the internet and found a few recipes to use the bucketsful of plums I was collecting off our trees.

TIP: for large plums, like the Italian Prune Plums on our biggest tree, use egg cartons to store them in the fridge and keep them from getting squished. 

I'm not going to share the recipe I used for the plum sauce because, frankly, it didn't turn out like any plum sauce you could buy in a store -- and not in a good way like home-made ketchup, either. However, I will share the very economical plum jam and plum clafoutis recipes I tried.

I found this recipe for Italian Plum Preserves online -- basically 10 cups of chopped, pitted plums, 7 cups of sugar and the juice of two lemons.  I boiled it for a bit longer than the recipe called for then poured it into about 15 jars (13 small jars, 2 medium). Since the fruit was free, the only cost was the sugar-- which I bought on sale -- and the lemons. Total cost? $2.90 -- about 19 cents per jar! However,I did price plums at the grocery store; at $1.99/lb, it would have brounght the cost up to just over $1 perjar -- still much cheaper than most other store-bought jam.

I still had plums leftover and this recipe for Plum Clafoutis did the trick -- 3/4 lb of plums, halved and pitted. The batter is somewhere between pancake batter and custard; the recipe says to serve "immediately" but it's best if left to set for 30 min or so after baking. Traditional clafoutis are made with cherries, I suspect most stone fruits would work. The only expensive ingredient listed is vanilla sugar. We happened to have some in the cupboard but really, regular sugar would be just fine.

Got a favourite frugal recipe? Pass it along!