Ah, the fruit trees of Coastal Virginia. Since I moved here from the Big Apple twenty years ago, I've met at least twenty homeowners who wished their trees would be less fruitful.
You don't see the problem coming when buying property. I once spotted a promenade of fruit trees behind a beyond-dilapidated house in Hertford, N.C., and all I could think of was the homemade jam I'd give away at Christmas. Now I'm grateful the owner turned down my offer.
Last summer I crossed jam-making off my bucket list. When a retired friend called to say he wanted to surprise his adult son by clearing the son's backyard of a hailstorm of purple plums, I grabbed my inherited 1947 copy of Irma Rombauer's The Joy of Cooking and headed out.
My friend stood waiting for me to arrive. The soles of his deck shoes were stained purple.
He accepted the five-pound bag of sugar I'd picked up on the way. "We're going to need a bigger bag."
I quickly saw the problem in the backyard. He'd collected five buckets of fallen plums but a thousand more plums—squished and not squished—blanketed the grass below one medium-sized tree.
His son's immaculate kitchen featured a white countertop. My friend had placed ten small jars there. He turned two buckets-worth of fruit into the sink and ran water over them. My job was to find a suitable cooking pot. His son had two saucepans—one small and one medium-sized.
"We're going to need a bigger pot," I said. "Maybe there's one in the garage?"
"He'll be home by five, and it's already one-thirty. We'll use the larger saucepan. I'll cook. You read."
Our grandmothers and mothers had used Rombauer's cookbook, so faith in its author came naturally to us. I'd marked the section on jam-making with a stroke symptoms flier someone had left in the book. "Shall we make Plum Jelly, page 703, or Plum Jam, page 706?"
"Jelly's fine."
"'Plums have their own pectin,'" I read. "That's a
relief because I don't know what it is. Do you?"
"Read on."
"Once the plums are washed, place them in the pot."
"How many?"
"She doesn't say." I wondered why the recipe didn't include cutting up the plums first. "'Boil them
in water until soft.'"
He pushed as many plums as possible into the saucepan, filled it with water, and lit the burner. At my insistence, he poked holes in some of the fruit so they wouldn't pop open."What next?"
"'Strain when soft.'" I located a colander.
"What happens after we strain it?"
"'Put the juice through a jelly bag.'"
Neither of us knew what a jelly bag was. "I can google it," I offered.
"Never mind," he said. "Whatever it is, we don't have
one. We'll improvise."
Improvising. Red stains on the white counter. Not my son. I kept reading. "We need a two-cup measure. The recipe says, 'Empty into each cupful of juice ¾ to 1 cup of sugar. Boil four cupfuls at a time and taste each cup to be sure it's sweet enough.' Neither of us should be drinking all that sugar."
"They're boiling over. I'll turn off the heat and make the jelly bag."
"It says the jelly bag can be made of flannel." "Unless you brought flannel pajamas or a lumberjack shirt I'll use this dishtowel."
If the bag he fashioned failed us, his son's kitchen would end up looking like a crime scene.
"RULE FOR MAKING JELLY, page 699 says pectin forms best in underripe fruit."
"You never said that. I'm boiling multiple levels of
ripeness here."
It's taken me until retirement but I've learned not to say, 'I'm sorry,' to bossy men. "I thought Rombauer would make this a joyful experience."
"You're too optimistic as a person."
"I'm optimistic? Who's cooking five buckets of plums in a medium-sized saucepan?"
"I've almost got this dishtowel into a funnel shape."
"I looked at the softened plums. He'd dumped in as much sugar as would fit next to them. "The recipe says none of the fruit should float. Some of these are still floating. I think you turned the heat off too soon."
He kicked one of the buckets part-way across the floor. That had to hurt. "Pour the stuff from the pan into that colander," he snarled. "I'll catch it with the rolled-up dishtowel and squeeze it into this mixing bowl."
Only a trickle reached the bowl. I picked up the book again. "'If the jelly is to be clear and sparkling, do not squeeze the bag.'"
I'd never seen him set his teeth the way he did then. "How can I get any jelly out of the bag if I don't squeeze it?" The stains on his son's dishtowel grew. The formerly white counter was purple.
"Let's switch to jam," I said. "Jelly needs too many gadgets. Here it is. 'For Plum Jam follow the rule for Quince Jam, page 705.'"
By two-thirty, the only things we'd strained were our patience and the limits of our friendship. We had two half-filled jars. I wished I'd checked Google to see if any advances had been made in jam-making since 1947."Do you think your son would mind if I eat some of his granola?"
"This should be easier," he said. You must have skipped something."
"Only lunch. You really needed a two-cup measure," I said. The recipe said to cook four cupfuls of jam at a time for twenty minutes. 'It should be thick and smooth.'"
"Twenty minutes after it's thick and smooth or twenty to thicken?"
"We've been at this for hours," I said. "Your brow is dripping sweat, and there's no dishtowel left to wipe it. The floor is getting sticky with jam."
"Doesn't that book say anything helpful?"
"It says 'stir frequently from the bottom as it is apt to stick.'" Gunk had hardened on the inside of each of our two saucepans. He tried to loosen it with a spatula.
"Try a spoon," I suggested. "My grandmother made jam and she always shooed me out of her kitchen with a spoon. Now, was her spoon wooden or metal?"
I was playing for time. I didn't want him to know Rombauer had moved on to Fruit Butters. Once he'd found out, my friend walked the remaining buckets of plums one at a time to the end of the driveway. He hid all evidence of our jam-making disaster, including the dishtowels, in a neighbor's covered trash can. I scrubbed the counter, but I'd seen too many cop shows to think I could get it all out.
At five o'clock when his son walked in to say Happy Father's Day we were fighting over the remote and polishing off the last of a three-cheese pizza delivered by Door Dash. The son's dad was an OK liar. He said we'd given the fruit to a homeless shelter, which we certainly will do if there's ever a next time.
