The more things change....

So today daughter B and granddaughter Hilary came to my house loaded down with peaches wanting a lesson in making peach butter. It had been years since I had performed this task, but it was fun and I remembered almost everything without having to do too much consulting of cookbooks. We ended the day with jars of glistening gold butter seasoned to perfection just waiting for its meet-up with some good bread and liberal spread of creamy butter.

At one point as we worked, I remembered something. I asked B if she remembered years ago in our Arkansas house making jam? "Oh yeah, I remember that." I think we both had forgotten it but the fragrance of the bubbling peaches triggered the memory for me.

On that particular day 20 years ago, I had the presence of mind to write down rather quickly on a sheet of onion skin paper our experience. I am going to re-write it here just as I jotted it down that day.

"June 10, 1988
Today Kelli and Brittainy and I made plum butter from plums gathered in Papa's orchard. Kelli and B washed the plums and picked out the wormy ones for me to take care of. Then we cooked them and put them through a sieve. When we were through, we had enough pulp to make butter and enough juice to make jelly!

Kelli and B helped to stir the butter as it cooked and that was a big help because it takes a very long time(about 45 minutes). As the butter cooked, we added 1 cup sugar for every cup of pulp, a dash or two of mace and two gratings of nutmeg. Next we poured the butter into sterilized jars and sealed them. Nana came to see us and took a jar home with her. It made 6 1/2 pint jars. For breakfast we will have toast with homemade plum butter. Next we plan to make raspberry jam."

Pretty staight forward, just the facts, but I sure am glad I wrote that down and stuck it in my recipe file. For some strange reason, I stick a lot of my writing in there. Or did. Before I began to blog. Now it's all pretty much here.