I finally got around to making the plum butter I was going on about last weekend when waxing rhapsodic about Italian prune plums. Naturally, the day I intended to make them, they weren't quite ripe enough, but alas. This is a simple, flavorful spread that is both beautiful and intensely plummy, as you'd hope it would be. Though the skins are left behind in the food mill phase, they cook with the plum flesh long enough to stain it a dark, rich magenta. Gorgeous, and hard to photo once canned; this pic doesn't do the hue justice. I'll try again later when I've spread some on toast. Today has felt very long, friends. T left for NY early this morning, and as Ol is not in camp or anything right now, and Jack goes just a few hours in the morning, I'm wearing the Mom hat a lot! Walks, experiments with a disposable camera, painting, making a tray with their handprints on it, generalized mayhem, a bath for Percy which always results in more mayhem, and in the midst of chopping the plums, I cut the bejesus out of my pinkie finger. T has been nuts over knife-sharpening lately, and this was a quick and deep slice into the old digit.

I wasn't sure if it would require stitches so called the boys out of quiet time after just 20 minutes because a tightly-wrapped band-aid seemed like a prudent first start, and I needed them to bring me one (I was applying extreme pressure at the moment AND did not in any way feel like dealing with the hospital). It then seemed wise to teach Jack how to make a phone call should he and Ol ever be home alone with me or T and one of us got hurt. So, we made a phone list and hung it in a place he can access easily and practiced calling my mom and my cell phone. Check that off the list of things to teach!

Aren't they cute in this pic?

Italian prune plums -these gorgeous, velvety-looking, oblong fruits- are beginning to trickle back into season, and I'm excited about their return. It means that summer is starting to consider wrapping its hot self up so as to make room for the bluster and beauty of fall. The simple yet bright flavors of produce grown in extreme heat will give way to the more nuanced ones of autumn. It is at this point each year that I start to think of stews, warm spiced jams and fruit butters on fresh bread, steaming mugs of tea on cool afternoons. A scarf here, close-toed shoes there, a hint of cool as dusk sweeps out day. I start to consider making our beds with blankets layered between the sheet and comforter, I start to wonder where my cardigans are. As a few leaves flutter to the ground each day, I make a note to purchase more lawn bags, knowing that days of endless raking aren't far in the distance. Before I cooked and shopped with the seasons, I didn't have such basic markers by which to track the pace of time. I love that something as simple as a variety of plum can orient me, remind me just where I am at this moment even though everything else seems to be spinning faster and faster. The busyness of the school year's end is equaled only by its resumption, and with just three weeks to go until the boys return to their classrooms, well, we're busy. In the midst of it all, I look for tethers, and in some elemental way, seeing these plums last week was just such an anchor, and today, I'm going to make some plum butter. Fruit butters are a long process, but that's what I enjoy about them. You need your heaviest pot, a good wooden spoon, a food mill is a real plus, time is a must. Channel your inner nonna, and a treat of a day is in store.