08/25/2026
Plum dandy.
😎
It’s time to set your stone fruit clocks from peaches to plums. Summer’s end is bittersweet for bakers; goodbye peach pies, hello Marian’s plum torte. The farmers market is buzzy with shoppers squeezing and discarding the last of the peaches with indifference. “Prune plums” is the week’s mantra, the alliteration hanging in the air, followed by a chorus of women bemoaning Rosh Hashanah’s early arrival.
I’ve selected a large plastic bag from the endless roll suspended overhead. Apparently, the plums are too weighty for the polybag. Splitting open from the bottom, I speechlessly claw the air, trying to catch the purple fruit before it hits the ground. Thankfully, a corrugated container of “It Girl,” (prune plums), tucked in its very own reusable bag, survives the chaos. Three pounds of plums and three hours later, there’s pie in the oven. A pie with whole wheat in the crust, candied ginger and just enough sugar in the filling to make the plums sing. In hindsight, it wasn’t the torn produce bag that did me in; it was waiting for the pie to cool so it was sliceable and wouldn’t burn the roof of my mouth. Let’s just say it was sliceable. It also tasted like the last week of August in the very best way. 🌻
