Sunday, October 16, 2011

jam







This is the lovely grape jam the girls and I made from the free concord grapes growing at my Grandma's house. It was a time consuming process but well worth the trouble. First the kids and I picked loads of grapes. Now these grapes have not been tended in more than ten years. Half of what we picked went into the garbage. Pretty discouraging. What we ended up with was more than I had figured on.

After we sorted the good from the bad we skinned them and put the skins in one pan and the "guts" in another. We like talking about guts in our house so this was a pretty fun process. Then I cooked the skins and while they were cooking we simmered the "guts". Then the guts got put through my food mill and then the mush was added to the skins. Loads and lashings of sugar got added and then cooked some more. Then it was bottled and processed.

The first batch had the recommended amount of sugar but the other four batches had less than half and taste just wonderful.

I gifted the full sugar jars to all the people in my life that don't appreciate recipes being messed with. (Yes Jenn you got the full sugar)

So I have loads of grape, blueberry, service berry and wine berry/service berry jam in my pantry. I sorely missed my sister on this grape venture as she has been my right hand "man" with our other jam.

Now I am on to applesauce... without sugar. :)

1 comment:

  1. Oh my yum! I didn't do any canning this year and will regret it come the winter months when I am yearning for some peach preserves. As I lament, I'll come back here and drool over your creation...and remind myself that I didn't can because it was "The Summer of the 1000 Degree Days" and that I was pregnant! I didn't even put in a garden! It would have burned up anyway... Looks yummy!

    ReplyDelete

I would love to hear from you.