Italian Plum Jam

Tom and I have had a very interesting time making (we'll we're not sure if we have succeeded) plum jam.
It was easy enough chopping the plums. It was easy enough boiling them with water. It was easy adding the sugar and then AAAAH we suddenly realized we had to boil the jam in a water-canner. What is a water-canner you ask? It's a large pot with a wire rack inside to keep the jars from touching the bottom. Do we have a water-canner? Of course not. So we ran to Fred Meyer (strange faux Wal-Mart) to buy one, but alas they didn't have one.

We decided we would pot a pot top in the bottom of a big pot. We tried that but didn't have enough room. We searched through our boxes and found our GIGANTIC lobster pot (thanks Liane). I found the perfect top to put in the bottom, and we are on our way to "processing" our jam.

Mixed with the death-plum farts coming out of Harper it is somewhat amazing that we are still alive. Pictures soon to come.

Italian Plum or Italian Prune....or both?

http://www.produceoasis.com/Items_folder/Fruits/ItalianPrune.html

This is the type of tree growing in our yard.
This is what Harper ate about 30 of yesterday.
This is what continue to make him fart uncontrollably.

Plum or prune? You be the judge!

This is the last piece of plum crisp that I made. It was delicious!

Relaxing Do-Nothing Weekend

This weekend was amazingly relaxing. I was even too lazy to bring Harper to the dog contest that entered him into. Two days of sleeping late. A breakfast out (smoked salmon eggs benedict), homemade waffles in, a long nap, walks with the dog in the sunshine. Honestly I couldn't have asked for anything more.

Now if I could just figured out what to do with the 9 million plums falling off of our tree. I am going to make Liane's famous chicken with plum salsa (or salza as she likes to call it) tonight. Is there such a thing as a plum crisp? We might find out.

Nothing much new on the house hunting front. We are still waiting for the house of our dreams to pop up on redfin for an affordable price.

School has gone incredibly smoothly for two weeks. I hope it continues in the same fashion.

I feel like I should keep updating the blog for any of you that read it, but other than waiting to see what happens after Harper eats about 20 plums in one day (so far gas and gross poops) there might not be anything super interesting that I post for a bit.

We went to a sports bar 2 seconds from our house called Bleachers today for the Bears game. It was PACKED with really intense SeaHawks fans who were drinking like there was no tomorrow. We had some nachos and chicken tenders. It was a gut-busting Sunday meal.

And that's the latest update. We are supposedly going to see 80 degree sunny days next week, so that is exciting.