Year of the Plum

It didn't seem like much got accomplished yesterday. My day didn't even really get started until after noon. Once I'd made myself presentable, I went straight to work on the Rustic Plum Cake...my final plum dessert of this particularly prolific purple plum season (awesome alliteration).

Now here's the thing: the recipe came from Cook's Illustrated, which is a membership website. I've stopped subscribing to all magazines, but I do pay for memberships to certain websites that used to arrive at my house in print form. I prefer digital at this point in my life. Who needs more paper to recycle? As for the recipe, I think it's cruel to share something here and then say...oh sorry...can't give you the recipe because it's a members only deal. And I worry about copyright infringement. In this case, someone else has already infringed for me, and so I can link to the recipe right here. If anyone complains, I can say, what? Who me? I didn't do it! Case closed.

Okay, so with that intro, you want to see the cake don't you? Feast your eyes...

The cake part was all mixed up in a food processor. The plums were poached in a red currant jelly-brandy syrup. The cake batter ended up quite thick...almost the consistency of peanut butter...and so it had to be spread out over the bottom of a springform pan before the plums were packed in, skin side down. Once it came out of the oven, it was allowed to sit until it was just warm and then the confectioner's sugar was sprinkled over the top. By the way, one of those little loose tea strainers works well for dusting confectioner's sugar.

I have one in the house, one in the fifth wheel, and one in our truck camper...you know...for sugar emergencies while on the road.

So anyway...the confectioner's sugar topping was sort of interesting. When I first put it on the cake, it mostly covered the whole thing. About half an hour later, the liquid in the plums had absorbed it, making the plums more visible and prettier.

By the time it was completely cool, the topping on the cake had hardened into a kind of crunchy candy coating. It gave the whole dessert the nicest texture.

Just a little of the syrup leftover from the poached plums was drizzled over the cake, and we gave it a little bit of whipped cream. The whipped cream absorbs all the calories. Wait...didn't you know that? It's true. I read it online.

And there you have it. One delicious dessert.

I know I say this every single time, but this is the most delicious plum dessert of the season. Except for all the others. And say good-bye, because the plums are finished for the year.

There were some outside chores to take care of yesterday. The poor annuals were a thirsty bunch. Fall is the "teasing season" in the garden. We get a few days of rain and then we think we're done watering for the year. And then there's no more rain for days or weeks, and the poor plants start gasping and wheezing for "water...please, some water...I'm dying here." And their pleas were falling on deaf ears for a while as we waited for more rain. Finally, we gave in to them, and yesterday was the day. We watered, and then it rained. Go figure.

After the watering was done, I made good on my threat to start the next "And On that Farm" section. I'll try to refrain from ranting about how much I hate McKenna Ryan patterns. If I ever say I'm going to buy another one, kindly suggest that I have my head examined. I'm counting on you to protect me from myself.

The first step with these is to sort through the kit fabrics and put them in order. It's a bit of a guessing game.

As it turns out, I've already sorted through the fabrics for the remaining sections of this quilt. When I worked on the last section (approximately 14 years ago), I discovered some fabrics were missing from my kit, and so I went through all the sections to check. There were several missing. The quilt shop has made my kit whole, and so it's all good, but I'm glad I checked. Here are the fabrics for the sheep and its background.

And for all the complaining I do about McKenna Ryan patterns, her fabrics are beautiful. I almost never work from kits, but I can't imagine trying to do one of her quilts without using her fabrics. Once I had them sorted, I cut the background piece...always a scary thought. As it turns out, there was a piece of fabric missing from this section. I was supposed to have a smaller piece of this fabric to use for the eyes. Fortunately, I had two strips leftover that gave me enough to get the job done.

And the eyes have it...that was where I started. I just laid them out on the placement diagram so you could see them.

Before I quit for the day, I had fused the templates to the fabrics for the nose and mouth, and that's where I'll start today. And, again, for all I complain about McKenna Ryan patterns, they are completely engrossing once you get past the annoying parts. It's very hard to walk away once I get going on them. This is a small section, and it wouldn't surprise me at all if I had it finished by day's end.

This morning, I started the stitching for the last block of the Heart & Home quilt. This one has lots of bees...some of my favorite critters on earth.

Today I'm going to tackle a big mountain of laundry, and I'm going to can some Tomato Jalapeno Jam from the tomatoes I've harvested from our own plants. Aside from that, I'll be working on the McKenna Ryan sheep.