Monday, September 21, 2009

Grapes. Lots and Lots of Grapes.

grapecluster4

About a month ago, Dwight and I picked a random collection of pears, blackberries and assorted other produce at his mom's house. Remember? While Dwight was busy plucking pear after pear from the fruit-laden branches, I wandered over to the grape arbors and took a peek at the masses of green grapes.

grapes1
Here's what they looked like a month ago.

grapes3

About two weeks ago, we got the call that the grapes were ready. Hooray! After a half day at work, Dwight and I headed off to his mom's, me with camera in hand, to pick a whole mess of grapes.

grapeclusters2

In this case, a "mess of grapes" equaled about 85 pounds. Seriously.

grapes1

And the thing is, we barely made a dent. Fairy wanted us to get first pick before she let the neighbors at them. Each year, Fairy lets them have their fill of grapes with which they make gallons and gallons of grape juice.

handful grapes

These are Concord grapes and are amazing. Apparently, Concords are disease and pest resistant, so they're easy to grow and keep pesticide free. They do have seeds, but the flesh just bursts with flavor. And the scent. It's heavenly. Heady. Like you just opened thousands of bottles of Welch's grape juice.

bag of grapes

We picked and picked and picked some more until we decided we probably had enough. Yeah, I think we did.

arbors

Picking was jut the first step, though. We had to process all of them and quickly. At first, Dwight used a juicer, but it was tedious and messy. Plus the color of the juice was all wrong. It was brownish. Blech! He then had an epiphany.

grapes on counter

"I think we should just cook them whole then run 'em through the mill, not even mess with the juicer."

grapes in pot1
grapes in pot2

Sure enough, that did the trick. Cooking the grapes with the skins on meant keeping the bright purply-pink color you want in grape jelly and grape juice.  So we cooked pot after pot of grapes, after de-stemming and washing them. It took all day—and well into the evening.

Dwight got a killer arm & shoulder workout, pressing batch after batch of grapes through our old-fashioned mill. It's a metal, cone-shaped colander on legs with a wooden, cone-shaped pestle. You push the fruit around, squishing it through the small holes, using nothing but leverage with the one hand and brute force with the other. It's a handy gadget. I've used it on sangria fruit that's been sitting in the wine all night. I'll run it through the mill to squeeze out every drop of fruity alcohol, strain and put back into the sangria with fresh, pretty fruit.

food mill
food mill in use

While Dwight cranked out juice, I made jelly and canned it in a boiling water bath. I made 24 8-oz jars of jelly and we had gallons of juice left. After tasting the jelly—and making yummy groaning noises—I had my own epiphany. Make grape simple syrup for mixed drinks. Dwight, the on the spot, clever guy that he is, named said drink perfectly. Grapelletini. And let me tell ya, they're AWESOME.


jelly-cooking1

jelly2-blown

Oh, and before we processed 85 lbs of grapes, we made about 18 16-ounce jars of salsa. I didn't get any in-process pics of that. Three kinds of peppers, lots of onions, oodles of garlic, mountains of tomatoes, a healthy dose of spices and a generous splash of lime juice all came together to make some darn tasty salsa. It's awful purty, too.

salsa2

10 comments:

  1. Wow, you two take that canning thing seriously. ;) It all looks delicious though, so I'm sure it's worth the effort.

    ReplyDelete
  2. We haven't canned in years, so this was quite an anomaly. HOWEVER, I'm hankerin' to can apples, so I'll keep you posted on that. :)

    ReplyDelete
  3. I wish I were as industrious to can that amount of grapes. Great job!

    ReplyDelete
  4. Crazy, I was going to skip this one to read the bread posts, but I became awfully fascinated with the juicing process and the color of the grapes. Plus, the salsa was the cream on the cake. Both are simply beautiful!

    ReplyDelete
  5. Daniel-Thanks! I'm glad you took the scenic route. :)

    ReplyDelete
  6. Where did you get that colander on legs? I am new to canning and my friend told me I just had to have one. I can't find one anywhere that isn't $89. I'd love to know. Thanks.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Blessed- My husband found that at a garage sale before we were ever married, but I found a similar one at an antique shop that I bought for my mom. I just did a search based on the memory of hearing this referred to as a "china cap", but those don't appear to have the stand and pestle.

    There's also something called a "chinois" that are similar. Here are a few links.

    http://www.thefind.com/kitchen/info-china-cap-strainer

    http://www.spoilthecook.com/bosch/Villaware-Chinois-Food-Mill.html

    Good luck!

    ReplyDelete
  8. Would love to have your recipe for grape jelly..email to sheferg@wirehand.net...thanks

    ReplyDelete

Thanks for stopping by and leaving a comment! Please note that I moderate comments so yours won't show up right away, but do know that I read all of them!

I will gladly answer any questions you have right here in the comments. If you would prefer a reply back via email, just let me know and include your email address. Or you can email me directly at info_kellyluna {at} frontier {dot} com.

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...