Oh, what to do with a glut of plums? Freeze them, jam them, jelly them, but don't can them

Plum jam without pectin

This Is Just to Say

I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox

and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast

Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold 
--William Carlos Williams


Every year Owl prunes the plum tree in February and I think we will have no plums. Then he thins the plum tree in May and I know we will have no plums.

And then August comes, and he brings in a tub of plums each morning. No chance of wreaking this marriage by surreptitiously eating the few scant plums tucked away in the icebox.

What we have found during our plum harvests:

• Flash-frozen plums are great for smoothies or lassis. (Or freeze them and make jam later in the winter when a boiling pot of plum jam adds warmth to your somber day.)
• Plum jelly is divine. It makes beautiful thumbprint cookies at Christmas.
• Plum jam without pectin (recipe forthcoming during some plum season) is fun to make for those of us who grew up thinking pectin was required for all jams and jellies. It is like all those dreams coming true where you actually can fly on your own. (Okay, maybe not that great.)
• Sometimes the aforementioned plum jam without pectin turns out to be plum syrup. It just wanted to be eaten on top of Owl's pancakes or swirled with plain yogurt.
• Plum butter is the most plummy of all. Eat with baguettes and a nice soft cheese.
• In a fit of ambition we canned Chinese plum sauce with star anise in 2010. It is very good with potstickers, but we still have a few awkward jars on the shelf. (To eat or not to eat old canned goods...)
• My plums are not worth canning. They look deceptively like peaches, but when you try to eat them, they are gooshy splooshy. This contradicts other's experience. Possible reasons: 
• Long cook time: I have to adjust for altitude, so when I can in a water bath canner, my processing times go up 5-10 minutes. Would pressure canning (so a lower processing time) help?
• My variety of plum (which I cannot name): My mother says it reminds her of a Jefferson prune. The flesh is orange-ish yellow, the exterior golden-ish with purple deepening as it ripens.
• Related, some people have good luck canning whole plums (of a different variety), and that may keep them in tact. My plums get much too large to fit in the jar whole.
• Most probable: they want to be eaten in their prime and refuse to behave in a jar.