Bombs away!

I know, one should never post more than once in one day, but you can never have enough of a good thing (ahum). So, since I will not be able to post tomorrow I thought I would make your day and post this now. Jinksy's post opened a drawer in my mind that contained this mad story. We have plumtrees in our garden. They are not of a cultivated variety I'm guessing. They bear tiny yellow or red plums. Quite nice to eat. The dogs love them. Can you imagine what happens when they eat a lot of plums? With stones and all. Hmmm. Yes. It is a beautiful picture. But actually beside the point of the story. One year, my mother came up with a cunning plan. My niece, about 12 years old at the time, stayed with them during her holidays. She lives in Amsterdam and arrived by train, her mother not being able to join her because of work commitments and her father, my brother, could only join her in spirit, because he is one. He died a couple of years before this story took place. My mother's cunning plan was to enlist the help of my little niece and gather lots of plums from our trees to make jam. And so they disappeared, armed with buckets and stepladders and closely followed by very interested dogs, into our plumtreewood. Four buckets full of plums later they reappeared, happy dogs, still licking their mouths, in close pursuit. Because you never know if someone drops a bucket. At the end of the day my mother, father and niece drove back to my parents' home to make the jam. Two days later my mother called, chuckling. She had made the jam, about 20 jars or so, only..... she mistakingly added sort of a secret ingredient. She had been wondering why the jam foamed so much while she was cooking it. She had meant to add vanilla sugar. Unfortunately the vanilla sugar packages look remarkably like baking powder packages. Realising she made an exciting mistake she ladled off most of the foam and added the vanilla sugar. The jam tasted really good, a bit like apricot jam strangely enough, but the jamfilled jars had quite a large layer of foam on top. 'Ah well, not to worry', I said jokingly, 'if you hear a big bang in the cellar, you know that the jamjars have exploded.' Would we like some jars, she asked. 'Sure! We are not that easily scared mom!' A couple of days after that, my niece went back to Amsterdam. All alone, by train. We like to live life on the edge in our family. My mother gave her a jar filled with plumjam and foam to give to her mother, who would collect her from the station. 'Best not keep it in your bag in case it explodes. Keep it in your hands', my mother wisely advised her. 'And don't tell your mother that I put baking powder in it.' When my sister-in-law called my parents later that day to say that their granddaughter had safely arrived, she told them that the poor child had been holding the jam jar firmly in her hands and had held her arms stretched to keep the jar as far away as possible for the duration of the journey. About two hours. She had been terrified that it would actually explode. Anyway, it looks to be a good plumyear this year. We will keep the baking powder well away from the vanilla sugar.