DEAR DAME EVELYN , My problem is plums. I don't know what to do with them. Last year I moved into a studio apartment in a small Edwardian building, and just outside my window is this ancient, gnarly plum tree. Last summer it didn't produce any plums at all – so no problem – but this year there are just hundreds of them. They make the branches droop and are splattered all over the concrete in the garden. The landlord told me the tree fruits like this every couple of years, and he has told me to take all of the plums I want. So I guess I went a little nuts, and now I have a couple of grocery bags full of plums. Some of them are ripe, many are not, some are perfect, quite a few are damaged, and I would like to figure out something, or some things, to do with them before they go bad and I end up throwing them in the compost bin. If it helps, the plums have a dark reddish purple skin, sort of like the color of red wine, and yellow flesh.

Fruitful

Plum,

(Sorry, couldn't resist.) Your plums sound like Santa Rosas or possibly Wicksons, but I gather that is not the issue. The issue is their zucchini-like profusion. The most obvious course of action is to eat them as they ripen (feel them for softness); and if you can't eat them fast enough, hold the ripe ones in the refrigerator until you're ready. Or do what Dame Evelyn does, which is to start baking like mad! Plums make an excellent filling for a country French tart; they also do quite nicely in an easy-to-make and quite spectacularly handsome upside-down cake. If you, or anyone else, would like the detailed recipes, e-mail me, and I will send them out. You will be relieved, I think, at how straightforward the recipes are, and there is nothing quite like having a good wallow in some brief seasonal abundance.

Plums, by the way, can be dried, whereupon they become prunes – a favorite of Sir Evelyn's. But drying must be left to the professionals; don't try it at home. And for that matter don't call them prunes. They are now known as dried plums, for reasons that should need no explanation.

Dryly,