Plum jam and the last of the summer sun?

It feels like summer is slowly coming to an end. I had the very last of the plums from the Oratia orchard and made some jam. I usually blend my jams as my husband like them smooth, but I prefer jams with chunks of fruit and peel in it, so I just remove the stone and cooked the plums with a little water and some jam setting sugar (this was a present, and I wanted to try it). The NZ jam tradition seems to be 1kg of sugar for 1 kg of fruit (or even more sugar if you make raspberry jam) for an Italian this is too much. I go for 40 to 60%, with the latter being my preference if I need to preserve the jam for a long time (it helps agains botulin). You can taste the fruit better with less sugar :-).

Finally I am getting sunflowers in the garden, now that summer is ending… well, I got three now, and they are my little personal suns!

And our cats, Nikita (left) and Marameo (right) are also enjoying the last of the sun, sleeping outdoors all day long! Marameo is 18 now, an old lady cat 

 Photos and recipes by Alessandra Zecchini ©