Putting for Jelly

I got it into my head that I wanted to make jelly. My mother-in-law had grape laden vines that were just going to waste and I love to experiment in the kitchen with things you don’t normally do. For many Americans, that would be simply making a meal from scratch. I on the other hand thought, “How hard can it be to make jelly?” Well, let me tell you.

I learned to cook early in life by watching my hero, Julia Childs, who patiently taught me how to cook. I would watch her religiously on PBS as she so joyously created each dish for her viewers to ogle. I would then try to recreate what she did, sometimes with partial success and others with dismal failure. That taught me to always follow the recipe. Until you mastered how things happen, do not vary from the list of ingredients, temperatures, or times. Well, just like remembering to keep my head down during my golf swing, it is a lesson I still need to learn.

I went to my mother-in-law’s on Saturday and picked probably ¾ of a bushel of grapes. We used shears to trim the grapes off of the vines and put them in plastic bags. They were full of spiders, bugs and leaves but did they smell good. Once I got them home, I took them to the back yard (I did not need the bugs in the house) and started pulling the grapes from the vine. I did enough to do one batch of jelly and took them into the house for processing.

Now the recipe is real easy. Squash the grapes and bring to a boil. Strain the grapes to get the juice out. Pour in sugar, bring to a boil, and add pectin. Boil hard for 1 minute and remove from heat. Scoop off the foam. Pour promptly into clear jars and cover with paraffin wax. There are measured quantities of each that needs to be followed and I did that exactly the way the recipe called out. I achieved seven 12 ounce jars of grape jelly for my efforts. The true measure was that it tasted good.

All smug from my first success, I tried a bigger batch the next day. I did not measure the juice or the sugar in exact quantities, after all, I was now a pro. I cooked everything for the right amount of time and added the pectin. What I got was 18 jars of very sweet grape juice sealed with paraffin wax. My mother-in-law came to the rescue and told me to pour it back into the pan and re-cook it. The next evening, I did exactly that. I calculated that I needed to add more sugar, and did, and added another packet of pectin. Once again I sealed the liquid in paraffin.

The next day after it had cooled, I had slightly thicker grape juice but no jelly. This time it went down the sink. It was a costly lesson in sugar, pectin, and time.

So what did I learn? Take you time and always be consistent. Follow the instruction and measure your ingredients. Just like with golf, use a slow back swing and keep you head down stupid. You’ll at least keep it in the fairway.

Icool

Cobb