Visions of Sugar Plums

While visions of sugar plums danced in their heads…

Ever had a preconceived notion totally blown out of the water? Like, a word that you’ve only seen written, never heard spoken– and then you hear someone use it and you realize you’ve been pronouncing it wrong all these years. Panic sets in as you wonder if you’ve ever mispronounced it in conversation with that really pretentious grammar and spelling snob you know.

Or, just some idea that you formed as a kid and never had challenged for any reason. When it comes up in conversation you breezily add your two cents, and then are stunned to find that you completely made this factoid up. (My most recent one: for some reason I always thought holy water was bottled somewhere sacred and shipped, if you please, to my church; or that maybe the priests blessed a new batch every day. Turns out it’s just regular tap water that passes under a crucifix.)

Not too long ago I updated one of my in-laws with all the interesting details of my best friend’s life– she’s had a baby and whatnot. I don’t see this in-law very often and so I always give her the latest deets. This last time, she listened politely to all the goings-on, and then informed me that SHE HAS NEVER MET THE FRIEND IN QUESTION. I’ve been telling her- for YEARS!- all about a person she doesn’t even know.

Anyway, today at the farmer’s market they had sugar plums. And I blurted out without thinking, “I thought sugar plums were candy!”

Am I alone here?

I thought they were literally candied plums. Like dried apricots, but with a sugar coating.

Turns out, I was partially right. I found this recipe for sugar plums on a site called use real butter (LOVE that name, and the photography is total food porn). They are a concoction of orange peel, dates, toasted almonds, and dried apricots, chopped and mixed with nutmeg, cinnamon, and honey, and then rolled into balls and dusted with confectioner’s sugar.

YES, I KNOW. It sounds heavenly and the author says it smells heavenly when you’re making it, and I can’t wait for fall when the weather turns cooler so I can have that spicy decadence wafting through the house along with some pumpkin pie and mulled cider, and I am making myself hungry.

Ahem. Pulling myself together.

Other sources indicate that the sugar plums mentioned in “Twas the Night Before Christmas” were sugar coated coriander. This does not sound delicious to me, but I’m not 100% on what coriander really is.

Sugar plums are also plums: little guys, maybe the size of a large globe grape, and holy toledo are they sweet and delicious. I bet they’re even better cold, but I can’t say for sure, since we ate through them ALL in the space of about four minutes. You know how when you bite into a perfectly ripened plum, the flesh at the outside is all red and juicy and runs down your chin? Well, these are COMPLETELY FORMED of that lovely red flesh, and they are small enough to be popped into your mouth and sucked on like hard candy (you have to spit out the stone).

This fruit’s sugar at harvest ranges from 18% to 25%, and it has been said “the rays of the sun have been captured and stored beneath the flesh of this singular fruit to only be set free when tasted.”

You better believe it, sweetheart. I’m just glad we didn’t make it to the market earlier, as we would have returned to buy their whole supply and that would definitely have done bad things to our budget.

We also bought blackberries, as you can see in the photo, and they were GIANT blackberries and therefore of no use to anyone in terms of giving perspective to the size of sugar plums.

The blackberries were also incredibly sweet and gone within minutes, but since I know what a blackberry is I don’t have anything interesting to add here. No, wait: you could read this post I wrote for Eco Child’s Play last year about how they dropped the word blackberry from the Oxford English dictionary but added the word BlackBerry. (Sadly, when ECP changed blog networks and transferred the articles, they were unable to transfer the author’s names with each post, but I swear I wrote it. You can see my name in the comments and everything. Sigh. That was months of article writing for nothing.)

Bringing it all back home:

Did you know what a sugar plum was? Ever make an embarrassing verbal gaffe? What’s a coriander like? Are there any other lesser known fruits that I need to try?

Local Peeps: sugar plums are available for the picking at Linvilla Orchards! I’d expect them to be at their peak for another week or two, tops. Their PYO hours are from 9am-6pm, but always call ahead first.