Plums and Apples!

In our garden we have a mini orchard, with 5 different apple trees and one victoria plum tree. This means that we have HUGE amounts of apples and plums to take care of, which promises for long hours of pots bubbling and releasing delicous aromas through the house. And then the beautiful bottles and jars with their "Homemade" labels on.....oh, the shelves in the food cellar are filling up!

I started yesterday with the plums and spent a very pleasant coffee break browsing through myriad cookbooks. Plums in cognac, plum compotte, plum pie, plum and apple chutney.....and, as so often before, I return to my faithful battered Swedish cookbook.

"Husmanskost" - in other words, everyday recipes which are delicious, straightforward and traditional. You know, the good oldfashioned kind of food like Nana and Mum make. Filled with recipes for stew, soups, pies, baking and JAM! Except in Swedish its often called "marmelad"! I just haven't quite figured out the difference, as jam is "sylt" but according to Mr MrsMacOlsson, its to do with the consistency. Anyhow, plum jam was the final decision, and I now have six dark purplybrown jars filled with Victoria Plum jam. Yummy in my tummy, as my kiddiewinks say.

Apples, well, there are no doubt going to be quite a few posts on apples. We have Ingrid Marie, Cinnamon Apple, Transparent Blanche, Gravensteiner and Cox Orange. Every one of those trees is laden with apples, so much so, that I can't keep up with the windfalls. They will be taken to the wood and left for the deer to munch on.....

The rest, well, I have my trusty cordial maker on the gas stove as we speak.
My "Saft Maja" is definitely my best bargain buy ever! One large batch of apple cordial coming up, with every apple piece carefully placed in the double boiler by my littlest MacOlsson........and yes, a few sneaked in his little chatty mouth too.

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