Ta-dah! Tuesday - The fruits of my (child) labour

Hi, sorry I've been awol this last week, been keeping kids entertained and attempting to sort a laundry mountain prior to heading to the Lake District this week. Added to my pre-holiday stress woes was the fact that all the wild plums have just ripened, and if we didn't pick and use them now, we'd have no plum jelly for the rest of the year. I know, how traumatic? So I enlisted the help of the kids and we collected these yesterday:

The above 4kg of small squishy fruit also managed to escape into the boot of the car on the way home, working their way commando style under the children's feet and to the front under my accelerator. Note to self: ensure carrier bags are properly tied up next time. I fear the husband's wrath if we break down on some remote country road as a result of plums in the engine.

I then spent yesterday evening washing, boiling and draining the juice of most of them:

before reboiling the juice with sugar to make 6 jars of this:

Ta-dah!

We mainly eat this with roast dinners - it is delicious - but it would also works with cheese, in sandwiches and as a base for sauces. There is no reason why you couldn't have it on toast too. The recipe is from The Cottage Smallholder and can be found here. I made sure there was enough fruit left to start another batch of plum vodka, which I posted about last year, and for those who missed it, is AMAZING and tastes like Christmas.

I now need to sort all our stuff for the Lakes, plus leave the house in some semblance of order for the house sitter. I hope to post at least once while I'm away, but if it doesn't happen I'll see you all when we get back.

Link up any ta-dah worthy posts below - my favourite last week was the paint by numbers drawers make-over by Kylie, but there are always loads of good ideas.

Lakota x