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Tuesday, February 1, 2011

Plums

I have never really been a plum girl. I just didn't ever warm up to them much. I like the deep red fleshed Black Doris plums that my grandfather grew (I think that's the one, otherwise it might have been Omega's). Other plums have never tasted all that good, and so I just ended up assuming that I simply don't like plums.

Well, I am now rediscovering plums. Last year, we got some Louisa plums at the local Farmers Market. They were not for me, but for my parents and hubby. I tried one though and discovered they are quite nice. They're a yellow fleshed plum with yellow skin that gets pink tinges when ripe. After that 'taste' of success, I decided this year to try some more plums. The last few weeks I got some Billington and Hawera plums from a lady at the Farmer's Market. She grows just the two types of plums and picks 500 trees herself. By the end of a season she is heartily sick of plums! Understandably. She told me these plums were red fleshed like Omegas, which sealed it. I had to try some. My verdict? The Billingtons are okay. I thought they were quite nice till I got the Haweras. The Haweras are better. They are also bigger so you get more plum per stone (pip). I have decided to add both to my possible tree-growing list, which is getting longer and longer as the months go by! I really had no idea there were so many different types of plums. I guess some of that is because we get so few in the supermarkets here in NZ. In Australia, I did buy plums occassionally when they were in season - there were often 3-4 varieties to choose from at my local Woolworths supermarket. Still, I imagine that is only a fraction of the number of varieties of plums.



Lousia's are the three yellower ones at the back of the photo, Hawera's are the redder ones, and Billingtons the smaller deep purple/red (they are just a bit bigger than the little Christmas plums). Munchkin rather likes the Billingtons. He can manage to eat one per sitting (minus the seed and skin, popped in his mouth piece by piece as we have discovered plum is a rather slippery customer when faced with small fingers just learning a pincer grip!).

What's your favourite type of plum?

Amy


Tuesday, 1st February, 2011

1 comment:

kiwimeskreations said...

Hmmm - I think the Omega's that I remember from way back in our married life would be my most favourite :-)
Blessings
M