Recipe: Bake a batch of California prune bars
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Call them dried plums or prunes; either way, they’re delicious – especially when made with fresh French or Italian plums.
These elongated “sugar plums” flourish in the greater Sacramento area. In the last weeks of summer and early fall, they’re readily available in farmers markets – or, if you're lucky, in your own backyard.
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| French and Italian plums grow well in the Sacramento region. |
Due to their high sugar content, these sweet ovals make good preserves, wine and brandy as well as fantastic prunes or dried plums. Freestone, these varieties let their pits pop out with little fuss.
Dried at home, these plums are soft and pliable. In a dehydrator, French or Italian plum halves takes about 24 hours to dry to perfection. Store the dried plums in the freezer; they’ll keep for at least a year.
What to do with those dried plums? Any recipe that calls for prunes, of course.
For September snacking, try this recipe for California prune bars, a variation of old-fashioned date bars. This recipe is adapted from a 1970 classic, “The California Cookbook” by former Los Angeles Times food editor Jeanne Voltz.
California prune bars
Makes 18 bars
Ingredients:
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Garden Checklist for week of Jan. 12
Once the winds die down, it’s good winter gardening weather with plenty to do:
* Prune, prune, prune. Now is the time to cut back most deciduous trees and shrubs. The exceptions are spring-flowering shrubs such as lilacs.
* Now is the time to prune fruit trees. (The exceptions are apricot and cherry trees, which are susceptible to a fungus that causes dieback. Save them until summer.) Clean up leaves and debris around the trees to prevent the spread of disease.
* Prune roses, even if they’re still trying to bloom. Strip off any remaining leaves, so the bush will be able to put out new growth in early spring.
* Clean up leaves and debris around your newly pruned roses and shrubs. Put down fresh mulch or bark to keep roots cozy.
* After the wind stops, apply horticultural oil to fruit trees to control scale, mites and aphids. Oils need 24 hours of dry weather after application to be effective.
* This is also the time to spray a copper-based fungicide to peach and nectarine trees to fight leaf curl. (The safest effective fungicides available for backyard trees are copper soap -- aka copper octanoate -- or copper ammonium, a fixed copper fungicide. Apply either of these copper products with 1% horticultural oil to increase effectiveness.)
* When forced bulbs sprout, move them to a cool, bright window. Give them a quarter turn each day so the stems will grow straight.
* Browse through seed catalogs and start making plans for spring and summer.
* Divide daylilies, Shasta daisies and other perennials.
* Cut back and divide chrysanthemums.
* Plant bare-root roses, trees and shrubs.
* Transplant pansies, violas, calendulas, English daisies, snapdragons and fairy primroses.
* In the vegetable garden, plant fava beans, head lettuce, mustard, onion sets, radicchio and radishes.
* Plant bare-root asparagus and root divisions of rhubarb.
* In the bulb department, plant callas, anemones, ranunculus and gladioli for bloom from late spring into summer.
* Plant blooming azaleas, camellias and rhododendrons. If you’re shopping for these beautiful landscape plants, you can now find them in full flower at local nurseries.
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