Unexpected windfall... of unripe grapes and plums

My husband called yesterday from a friend he was visiting. The friend asked me whether I would like to have some home grown table grapes and plums. He is a bachelor, this is his first house, he has no use for them. I said, sure! Well, my husband arrived home with over 30 lbs of half ripe grapes and plums, not quite good yet for direct consumption. I was nonplussed. I even posted at the Discuss Cooking forum for advice.

In the end I decided to start with the plums because they seemed to be more fragile. I sorted them in two piles, riper and less ripe. The less ripe pile is left to ripen until tomorrow.

Tonight I worked with the smaller, riper pile. I washed them,



ground them in the blender, put the mush on the stove with the appropriate amount of sugar,



and cooked it.

When it reached the right consistency, I divided the batch in three, I mixed in the first batch 1 cup of ground almonds and a few drops of almond essence, in the second I added 1/2 cup of Jamaican rum, and into the third batch I mixed a jar of peach jam that I made last week, together with 1/2 cup of roasted, chopped walnuts. I reboiled each batch, ladled them into jars, capped them, turned them upside down and they are waiting on the counter to be cleaned and labeled. I will make some photos of them tomorrow.