Monday in the Garden

A lot of summer time is devoted to gardening and general yard upkeep.  The Concord Grapes have been waiting to harvest.  The grapes this year have not excelled, but there were plenty to pick and preserve.  I do not make juice as a rule, or jelly (diabetes is a bummer), but Concords are too seedy to make raisins.  (There must have been a time in the past when raisins were made with seeded grapes because the package says "Seedless Raisins" [or used to say--I don't buy raisins anymore].  Raisins with seeds would have been before my time.)  BTW I did set side any grapes that had dried on the vine--raisin--to see what they would be like dried.  Way too hard to crunch the seeds by tooth.  Grape seeds are great antioxidants, but I doubt that chewing them would make them digestible.   

I canned the grapes this year just like you would put up other fruits. This means pulling every grape off the stem which takes several hours.  I took pictures of the three large bowls of grapes that I stemmed for two and a half hours, but they are not in my camera??? Take my word for it; it was an impressive site.  Then I loaded them into sterile quarts, added boiling water, sealed them and water bath canned them for 15 minutes.  No sugar needed because grapes are so sweet.  
I got 12 quarts and three pints (ran out of clean quart bottles) plus another quart (peanut butter jar that was not sealable) for immediate consumption.  To use them later I just drain off the juice which is quite concentrated and rinse off the grapes with half a bottle of water for great grape juice.  If you like it stronger don't add the water.  Then put the fruit through  a food mill and use the pulp to make some Chia Seed Jam.  It works.

Not too bad for a day's work.  2 hours picking grapes, 2-1/2 hours stemming them and another 1-1/2 hours canning them.  (And that is why I don't can too much any more.  It is a time consuming process.) [and tiring]

HAPPY CANNING


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