A couple of months ago, talking about Spring, I showed a picture of a bit of our plum tree in blossom.  (I think it’s a “Santa Rosa” plum tree.)  This tree has managed, over the 21 years since we first planted it, to produce some decent crops.  However, over the last 5 years, the crops have been outstanding.  Maybe the roots finally hit groundwater?  Maybe it just takes that long for one of these to mature?  I have no idea why, but we are now getting over 100 lbs of plums each year from this tree. 

In the past, we’ve Plum BBQ Sauce, which actually is pretty darn good, if I do say so myself.  This year, while we may make some of that BBQ sauce again, we’re working on other recipes.  Lori made a Chipotle Plum Sauce – sweet, smoky, tangy, delicious – which is a new one for us.  And the other night we had shrimp with a Plum Salsa, accompanied by Plum Tropical Smoothies.  The smoothies were just made up on the spot, as some hard alcohol seemed appropriate for that evening.  Here’s approximately what went into those drinks:

1 cup diced plums

1 cup diced frozen mango

½ cup diced pineapple

6 oz rum

3 oz peach brandy

Ice

Put it all in a blender, and away you go.  Unfortunately, as can be seen from the photo, we had no umbrellas or anything fancy, so just regular straws for the drinks. 

The Plum Salsa effectively just replaces tomatoes in a salsa with plums.  The color is about the same, but the plums are a bit firmer.  Here are the ingredients:

8 plums, diced small

1 red bell pepper, diced small

4 green onions, fine dice

½ red onion, diced small

1/3 bunch cilantro, fine dice

1 jalapeño pepper, fine dice

Juice of 2 limes

Salt and pepper to taste

After putting everything together, take about half the mixture and run it briefly through the food processor or blender, then recombine with the other half of the salsa.  I highly recommend letting it sit overnight to let the flavors come together.  It was good the first night, but we tasted too many of the individual flavors.  The next day it was much better.  Makes about 3 cups salsa. 

Enjoy the drinks and salsa, and if you need some plums, just let us know.  We have just a few! 

L’Chaim,

Larry