I think summer is really here. It’s only the third of December and already we’ve got a forecast top of 33°C (~91°F)…but it’s nice and cool inside!

The guys finished installing our cooling yesterday and it’s doing a great job. We’ve got six ceiling vents throughout the house – one in each bedroom and three in our living/kitchen/dining area. I think it will take me a while to get the hang of the system (you open windows to encourage air to flow to the parts of the house you want to cool) but I’m loving the fact that evaporative cooling pumps fresh air into the house rather than recycling the air already here.

It’s only 23°C inside, despite the heat outside, and the breeze generated by the system makes it feel even more pleasant. We were on the fence about whether we should go ahead and get the cooling in this year. Now that I can feel the difference, I’m glad we made the jump. We’re getting an awning installed outside our bedroom window too in a few weeks (it catches all of the afternoon sun) so that should help cool us down further.

Because it was forecast to be so hot, I headed out into the garden first thing this morning. We have a plum tree laden with fruit, but it is growing underneath the power lines. We had a notice from the electricity company that they’ll be out in the next fortnight to inspect the lines and make sure nothing’s growing too close to them. To keep us from getting a notice, I had to prune the tree at the worst possible time of year. I hope it forgives me!

I salvaged all of the green fruit from the branches I cut down, so now I’ve got 1.5kg of small green plums to find a use for. I’ve been digging around to see if I can find a recipe for green plum chutney (like green tomato chutney) but it doesn’t seem to be a thing. I’m tempted just to give it a go, but it would be such a waste if it didn’t work out.

The flesh is soft and the fruit fell away from the tree easily (in fact they started dropping when I started pruning), so I don’t think they’re too green. Some of the fruit have a blush of colour to them and I’m hoping I might get lucky and they might ripen for me. I’m going to pop a banana in with them and wrap the whole thing up in a tea towel. If they do ripen, I’ll turn them into a spiced chutney – recipes for which seem plentiful. I might try a spiced chutney recipe even if they don’t ripen. I guess I could always add a little extra sugar?

Any suggestions for me? Have you ever done anything with green plums? Do you think I should wait or should I crash on through?

PS: Alex seems to have escaped the vomits and Hugo slept through the night. Things are looking up again!