Click here to read more of her titles. Colonists discovered many kinds and colors of wild and cultivated plums, including the uniquely American beach plum. Some have extremely tart skins, while others, such as greengage, possess a juicy sweetness all the way through. Unripe plums of any kind are astringently tart, so let the buyer beware and let him also experiment in his plumming pleasures.
Nothing beats the taste of ripe plums in season, their taut skins bursting with juice.
When I buy too many plums to eat raw, I bake them with something sweet like jelly and tart like orange. I might also put them in a nutty pastry crust or, on an Indian summer day, puree them to make a beautifully green or pink ice cream topped with a sprig of garden mint. The Chinese have known for centuries the pleasures of combining the tart sweetness of plum puree with pork, duck, or chicken. In summer and fall, our American colonists went a-plumming to garner fruits for winter, fruits they could preserve by bottling, jellying, or drying. Because my family was addicted to prunes for reasons of internal plumbing, I thought I could never with pleasure look a prune in the face.