Bringing the house down

York was a lovely place to visit with lots of history and some amazing places to eat. Who would have thought that tapas and antipasti would be so good in North Yorkshire? Sheepish the LYS is also fab, I managed to visit three times in four days and left with a bag full of lovely deep red Rowan aran wool. One of the shop assistants there was a little concussed. She had recently been hit on the head by a melon. Moral of the story? Don't store melons on the top shelf of the fridge. They don't like it and will let you know by throwing themselves at your head.

We travelled First Class on the train as the tickets were a competition prize. A woman in our carriage looked familiar. When we got home, I checked IMDB the movie database and I'm pretty sure it was Rhea Perlman, aka Mrs Danny De Vito. Further googling showed that she is acting in London at the moment and we were on the London train, and she got on at Edinburgh, home of the International Arts Festival. Could it be? It's almost as odd as the time that a friend saw Rosanna Arquette in the grocery queue in Safeways in Glasgow's Byres Road. That turned out to be true - she was dating a Glaswegian musician at the time, but Carla from Cheers?!

Talking of things Glaswegian, while I was away, my old friend Kevin sent me a link to a BBC news site with the picture above . This is Wilton Street in Glasgow where we used to live as just graduated impoverished people. The room right at the top with the bay window was my bedroom. Yes, the one on the right with no wall left. Yikes! We used to sit on that roof smoking cigarettes and drinking wine while music played and we argued about who was going to climb back in through the window to change the CD.

When we got home we realised that just like Miss Frugality, we have a bumper plum crop so for her and anyone else blessed with abundant stone fruits, here is my recipe for Plums To Put In The Freezer And Eat Later.

Ingredients
Plums - as many as you have
Carton of grape juice ( the original recipe said wine but we never have any left. )
Sugar/Honey
Star Anise ( one flower shape's worth )
A couple of cloves
Some cinnamon bark.

Method.
Halve and stone plums and put them face down in a dish. Don't overlap them, just fill the bottom of the dish. Add grape juice but not so much that the plums are covered, maybe just to their middles. Add spices and a couple of tablespoons of sugar to each dish. I make this for my mum who has diabetes and we don't put any sugar in at all and it is still lovely.
Oven on at 170 degrees ( that's about 350 I think ). Cover dish with tinfoil and bake for about an hour. Eat hot or leave to cool. If your liquid is too thin, strain and boil up till it is reduced to your liking. Lovely with meringues, cream, creme fraiche, ice cream, yogurt......

Stick in freezer bags or containers and bung in the freezer. Eat smugly some months later.

If you have any plums left - make jam. I can give you a recipe for that too!