Seriously, when spring & summer comes around my heart flutters and I just want to prance around the fresh produce aisle and try to eat all the different type of fruits and vegetables that I can set my eyes on! Now that summer is coming to an end soon…I’m freaking out! Not that my Moleskine Recipe Journal helped at all. Every time I check to see what is in season I see this…

Northern hemisphere (left) vs. Southern hemisphere (right). It’s just not fair! So every time I go to the grocery store I end up buying more then I can eat. This time it was pluots! What is this thing, “pluot”, that my autocorrector keeps correcting to “plots”? It is a cross between a plum and an apricot. I came across it at Costco and it peaked my interest. I’ve heard of it before, but never had a chance to taste it. So staring at it, scared and thinking to myself that I may not have another chance to buy this rare hybrid; I bought 14 of them. It can’t be helped! It’s Costco!

What do I do with all the pluots!?!? I ran and grabbed one of my cookbooks, Ripe by Nigel Slater. This book is magical. I dare whomever that don’t like fruits to read this book. He makes every fruit seem magical like it is something out of a fairy tale and not real life. The way he describes plums makes you want to drool. How dare you, Mr. Slater! It maddening enough I have pluots staring at me on my countertop, now I’m drooling all over the place!

Since the pluots I got were ripe and more of a plum texture, I decided to make the Plum Crumble Tart from Mr. Slater’s cookbook. The cookbook contains more then pies, crumbles, and cake recipes; it also has recipes incorporating fruits in chutneys, roasts, sauces for ribs, and much more. It also describes variations of fruits, what seasons they are available, and what goes well with them. A must have cookbook!