Fruit Galore and it's only September

I may have complained about Fred eating my zucchini but he is only one peacock and this farm has a lot of fruits and vegetables growing on it, most years anyway. My friend, Nancy and her husband have a phrase for this, "the burden of abundance". I guess you have to know where we are coming from, alliteration be damned! Even this girl can't kill all the plants.

So, September has become our Google month for the harvest we bring in. How many ways can figs be processed when there are so many figs on the tree that even the dogs graze the bottom branches? If you have over 300 pounds of Italian prunes, how many dried prunes will this make and is it awful to send prunes in Christmas packages to all your friends and relatives? With 10 gallons of apple cider still in the freezer from last year, how long will it take to drink before we need to press for this year, and why isn't it all gone already?

So far, we have canned pickles and tomatoes, but nowhere near all. We have roasted our first chiles and kept some for fresh, freezing the rest for the dead of winter. We have made salsa from all the cherry tomatoes and plan to make enough to last until next summer. We made Kim Chee out of the cabbage because Greg wasn't sure he wanted gallons of sauerkraut. We will have to see whether this was a good idea after it has aged a month or so. Annie has made about 40 jars of fig jam, and I think she will soon be moving on to plum jam, because I wasn't kidding about the 300+ pounds. This weekend will be full of corn and more tomatoes and cucumbers, more chiles...and plums for prunes, plums for compote, and, if I could figure out how to freeze it well, plum galette.

Karen gave me the best recipe for plum galette. It isn't that hard but it pays to look at the directions and do a little math on the prep time before jumping right in, the way I did...with a deadline. Okay, so I had to cut corners, but it worked out anyway.

First you make a pate brisee which is the French way of saying a pastry with lots of butter. This is supposed to chill in the fridge for an hour at least, but from personal experience, a half hour was sufficient. Then you make a fine powder of brown sugar, corn starch, and ground Hazelnuts; except here I didn't have any Hazelnuts so I used Pine nuts and these were fine.

You roll out the dough, cut it in a rectangle, spread the bottom with the brown sugar mixture and cover this with rows of sliced plums. Sprinkle with granulated sugar and fold up the corners of the pastry around your creation to hold the juices in. Did I mention this is made on a flat cookie sheet?

Oops, here you are supposed to put the whole thing back in the fridge for another half hour to chill. I gave it 15 minutes. Before popping in the oven, you brush an egg over the pastry, then bake for about 40 minutes at a high temperature. After removing the browned and bubbly galette from the oven, it is supposed to cool before you brush it with warm plum jam. We didn't have plum jam so we used, you guessed it, fig! We also were out of time so we didn't let the galette cool to room temperature. This didn't seem to make a difference. The galette was a success both in presentation and taste.

Poor Greg, we saved him the last slice; however, I see many more galettes in the future, maybe even with the correct timing and ingredients...or not. I also see Greg's idea of distilling fruit as happening sooner than he might have planned. Plum brandy sounds good if we can come up with a recipe. Guess it's time to get back on Google! What did farmers ever do before the Internet...oh, yeah, they wrote all those recipes. Happy harvest to all!

Photo: Plums and pears fill the carport

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