Plums
To say that ‘making chutney has been my salvation’ would probably be overstating it somewhat, but since we moved to France it has been a necessary outlet, a respite, my go-to calm place. Some people assume that the chutney page on my website is a joke, some sort of elaborate gag to act as a hook to media interviewers, a ruse to show just how wacky us comedians can be. It’s not. I make chutney. I love it.
For the past two years though production has been halted. A combination of appalling spring weather, voracious birds and horses who like nothing better than to see me miserable has meant that there’s been absolutely no summer fruit whatsoever. The fruit trees have grown their leaves in early spring and made playful motions as to actually producing fruit buds and then all of a sudden give it up as a bad lot and remain impotent throughout the season, mocking me from their now horse-free orchard.
This summer has been different though. The apple trees, after a particularly bad mauling from Junior, have given up on life entirely but the pear tree is back proudly showing it’s juicy wares as is the peach tree which was so laden a branch snapped off before it could be successfully propped up. The plum trees have gone crazy, firstly the plump, juicy Reine Claudefollowed shortly after by the vibrant purple of the damsons. It all sounds beautifully romantic and bucolic to imagine us getting up for breakfast and foraging for fresh fruit of a morning, and to be fair Natalie and the boys quite often do just that but I’ve never really trusted fresh fruit.
Oh I like the idea of it and I’m hugely protective of my orchard but just picking a plum or something off a tree with scant regard for what may have laid eggs in the thing is utterly beyond me. Natalie, like her dad and most of her family as far as I can see, think nothing of plucking some ripe specimen and munching eagerly around the bad stuff. Madness if you ask me but there’s more. Fresh fruit is messy, with its unregulated juice spouting off at every bite and therefore not to be trusted if, like me, you’d rather not be seen in public at all than with tell-tale fruit stains all over your Fred Perry.
But the plums just keep on coming. I’ve made dozens of jars of chutney, Natalie has made jam and ‘leathers’, we’ve done clafoutis, more chutney, extra leathers and another load of jam which only used up about two branches of the stuff. Now, like I say, I love a spot of chutney making and could quite happily spend all day in the kitchen but there’s a limit and just blindly producing industrial quantities of plum chutney is all very well but after the fortieth kilo of de-stoning the things the novelty does tend to wear off.
There’s no way we could cope with this year’s plum harvest alone, we needed help. Karine is a friend who lives about a mile away, she has three children similar ages to ours and we’ve known her since we moved in. Recently she set up her own organic fruit and veg business and sells at the local markets on a Thursday and Saturday. Karine is a very gentle, quietly spoken lady but she knows what she wants and although she was initially keen to sell our plums for us, she had to inspect them too and also confirm that they are in fact bio, or organic, and that they haven’t been ‘treated’ in any way.
Of course my childish nature couldn’t let an opportunity like this go past without comment,
“So you’ve invited a neighbour around to inspect my plums?” I know childish, and also as is my nature at times, utterly relentless and so what I perceived to be ribald hilarity quickly palled until even Samuel couldn’t help himself and just told me to ‘give it a rest.’
Karine declared herself happy with my plums (you see? I just can’t help it!) and took a large basket, possibly around 10 kilos and a smaller basket of pêches de vigne. She did so the next day too and then two more baskets the following week. I have to say that part of me, tragically, felt a little sad about giving up my fruit like that which I know sounds odd but my orchard is important to me and the welfare of its fruit of genuine concern.
“What are you doing?” Natalie hissed at me in the market, spying me skulking about behind a stall opposite Karine’s, which I might add was doing a roaring trade.
“I’m just watching my plums.”
“You’re weird.” She said.
I felt some strange kind of parental responsibility as I watched the basket quickly empty and gauged the ‘worthiness’ of prospective buyers, whether or not they’d treat my plums with the respect they deserved, that they were going to a good home.
“Are you really going to stand there all day like this?” Natalie asked, after trying and failing to get me to move.
We made about 50 euros in the first week and still I felt some strange guilt about letting them go, a pathetic sense of loss which meant me moping around all through lunch on market day like I’d had to give up a litter of puppies or something. It was a very odd feeling. Natalie tried to insist that what I was feeling was a delayed shock, that the trauma of my botched vasectomy had come back to haunt me through the metaphor of my ‘lost plums’, which of course brought the house down but which was unhelpful to say the least.
The doorbell rang and I went to answer it just to get away from any more uncomfortable double entendres to be honest. It was our elderly neighbour and could I do her a favour. This is unusual as madame is about 90 years old, bent double but fiercely, and I mean fiercely, independent.
“Of course.” I said, wondering what on earth it could be.
“I’ve got too many plums on my plum tree. Can you take a load off me?”
And I did too, like a plum.
For chutney recipes and botched vasectomy details, my book,À la Mod... is available in paperback, download and audiobook read by me. Clickhere.
For the past two years though production has been halted. A combination of appalling spring weather, voracious birds and horses who like nothing better than to see me miserable has meant that there’s been absolutely no summer fruit whatsoever. The fruit trees have grown their leaves in early spring and made playful motions as to actually producing fruit buds and then all of a sudden give it up as a bad lot and remain impotent throughout the season, mocking me from their now horse-free orchard.
This summer has been different though. The apple trees, after a particularly bad mauling from Junior, have given up on life entirely but the pear tree is back proudly showing it’s juicy wares as is the peach tree which was so laden a branch snapped off before it could be successfully propped up. The plum trees have gone crazy, firstly the plump, juicy Reine Claudefollowed shortly after by the vibrant purple of the damsons. It all sounds beautifully romantic and bucolic to imagine us getting up for breakfast and foraging for fresh fruit of a morning, and to be fair Natalie and the boys quite often do just that but I’ve never really trusted fresh fruit.
Oh I like the idea of it and I’m hugely protective of my orchard but just picking a plum or something off a tree with scant regard for what may have laid eggs in the thing is utterly beyond me. Natalie, like her dad and most of her family as far as I can see, think nothing of plucking some ripe specimen and munching eagerly around the bad stuff. Madness if you ask me but there’s more. Fresh fruit is messy, with its unregulated juice spouting off at every bite and therefore not to be trusted if, like me, you’d rather not be seen in public at all than with tell-tale fruit stains all over your Fred Perry.
But the plums just keep on coming. I’ve made dozens of jars of chutney, Natalie has made jam and ‘leathers’, we’ve done clafoutis, more chutney, extra leathers and another load of jam which only used up about two branches of the stuff. Now, like I say, I love a spot of chutney making and could quite happily spend all day in the kitchen but there’s a limit and just blindly producing industrial quantities of plum chutney is all very well but after the fortieth kilo of de-stoning the things the novelty does tend to wear off.
There’s no way we could cope with this year’s plum harvest alone, we needed help. Karine is a friend who lives about a mile away, she has three children similar ages to ours and we’ve known her since we moved in. Recently she set up her own organic fruit and veg business and sells at the local markets on a Thursday and Saturday. Karine is a very gentle, quietly spoken lady but she knows what she wants and although she was initially keen to sell our plums for us, she had to inspect them too and also confirm that they are in fact bio, or organic, and that they haven’t been ‘treated’ in any way.
Of course my childish nature couldn’t let an opportunity like this go past without comment,
“So you’ve invited a neighbour around to inspect my plums?” I know childish, and also as is my nature at times, utterly relentless and so what I perceived to be ribald hilarity quickly palled until even Samuel couldn’t help himself and just told me to ‘give it a rest.’
Karine declared herself happy with my plums (you see? I just can’t help it!) and took a large basket, possibly around 10 kilos and a smaller basket of pêches de vigne. She did so the next day too and then two more baskets the following week. I have to say that part of me, tragically, felt a little sad about giving up my fruit like that which I know sounds odd but my orchard is important to me and the welfare of its fruit of genuine concern.
“What are you doing?” Natalie hissed at me in the market, spying me skulking about behind a stall opposite Karine’s, which I might add was doing a roaring trade.
“I’m just watching my plums.”
“You’re weird.” She said.
I felt some strange kind of parental responsibility as I watched the basket quickly empty and gauged the ‘worthiness’ of prospective buyers, whether or not they’d treat my plums with the respect they deserved, that they were going to a good home.
“Are you really going to stand there all day like this?” Natalie asked, after trying and failing to get me to move.
We made about 50 euros in the first week and still I felt some strange guilt about letting them go, a pathetic sense of loss which meant me moping around all through lunch on market day like I’d had to give up a litter of puppies or something. It was a very odd feeling. Natalie tried to insist that what I was feeling was a delayed shock, that the trauma of my botched vasectomy had come back to haunt me through the metaphor of my ‘lost plums’, which of course brought the house down but which was unhelpful to say the least.
The doorbell rang and I went to answer it just to get away from any more uncomfortable double entendres to be honest. It was our elderly neighbour and could I do her a favour. This is unusual as madame is about 90 years old, bent double but fiercely, and I mean fiercely, independent.
“Of course.” I said, wondering what on earth it could be.
“I’ve got too many plums on my plum tree. Can you take a load off me?”
And I did too, like a plum.
For chutney recipes and botched vasectomy details, my book,À la Mod... is available in paperback, download and audiobook read by me. Clickhere.
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