Mel's Zingy Jam (Plum Cardamom)

Companion photo to last week's still life with all the plums.  It took me a while to boil the plums down to jamminess, and I opted not to use pectin, although near the end of the process I did add some sugar in a moment of weakness.  (The jam is pretty zingy!)  I found a good homesteading website called Northwest Edible Life that had pectin-free jam-making info, and they suggested flavor zings for different fruit.  For plums, the dry zing was cardamom, which is a favorite of mine. I can get green cardamom pods at Natural Grocers, and I grind them up for super fresh cardamom!  The wet zing was port wine, which would probably be a good choice too, but I opted to leave it out.  Once I had pitted all the plums I counted the pits, and I had used 127.  It boiled down into 11 half pint jam jars worth.  Now I just need to work on my designer labels :)