I Shall Call It.... "Plumple"

There was a small plum tree growing in our yard when we moved in. Whether it was planted intentionally or came up "volunteer", I don't know. I'm guessing volunteer, because I don't really know anyone that has a penchant for plums. At least not the way they get hankerings for a fresh peach or a homegrown cherry pie. Plum just seems like an odd choice if you were only going to plant one fruit tree.
But the last month, Paul has really been on me to "do something with the plums before they go bad." He was really worried, because they started falling off the tree. Yet the ones still on the tree were hard as rocks. I kept telling him, "Well, after we go to Springfield." ...."Well, after I get over this cold." ...."Well, after Christina and Amy's weddings."
Well, all my excuses are past, so I had to do something. I picked them last week and got about a mop bucket full. I still had some apples left over from Carrie's harvest of my mom's apples (they'd been in the fridge about a month), so I decided to put them together and make some concoction. One of Nathan's baby foods is apples with plums, so that gave me the idea to make some type of apple/plum sauce.
Here's the journey those lovely plums and ugly apples went through.

You cut up the fruit.

You cook the fruit.

You mash the fruit.

You cook it down some more because it was 90% juice.

(not pictured) You get frustrated after a solid day of cooking it down, so you put it through a strainer and strain off 11 cups of juice.

You end up with 7 pints of "plumple" sauce, and about 20 half-pints of beautiful plumple jelly.

The jelly is good at least. We're going to crack open the plumple sauce for lunch today. I have a feeling it's going to be a bit tart, as I only added about a cup of sugar. But it's pretty. And the jelly is set. So I'm happy.