After a hot dry summer some things are ripe early, including it would seem plums.  Aunty Biscuit was given a box of them from someone at work so she made some jam yesterday. I personally did not witness this event but earwigged in on the resulting conversation. It would seem that it took as long to clean the cooker kitchen surfaces, wall and floor as it did to make the jam and to prepare some juice for jelly making.  Needless to say any utensil used was liberally coated and somewhat sticky. Jam making is an inherently hazardous activity but she was unscathed.  Her slapdash method of making plum jam is to put a pound of fruit (stalk removed, split fruit but leave stones in -something to do with pectin I believe but don’t bet on it) to a pound of sugar. The mixture is then boiled to nearly setting point, the stones CAREFULLY fished out, carry on boiling to setting point (which has something to do with wrinkles and saucers) cooled very slightly and potted into hot sterilised jars.   It would appear that one of the downsides of modern technology in respect of jam making is that there are less newspapers to stand the jars on in the oven and when filling.