Friday, February 10, 2012

Grape Jelly



We've discovered wild grapes all around our neighborhood during the late summer months.  Malia was the great gatherer last summer, but the rest of the family got in on an outing or two.  These grapes have a wonderful flavor, but they're pretty tart; they're also small and have a seed.  So I cooked them and strained out all the juice.  It seemed too busy to make it into jelly right away, so we froze the juice.  February seemed the right time to pull it out and get busy.

Here's about half of the finished product.  I'm really not into canning, so I always hold my breath wondering if it's going to work.  It did!  And we made it using the "no sugar added" stuff from Rainbow.  Since the juice was so tart, I added 3/4 cup honey to every 4 cups of juice, and substituted one cup of the wild grape juice for one cup of grape juice from concentrate (still 100% juice).  Everyone likes it and I'm happy about having some jelly that's a bit healthier!

2 comments:

Abbi said...

That is neat that it turned out well for you. I tried Grape jelly with honey this summer but it wasn't very successful. I'll try again next year!

Emily said...

Hi Christy,
It was good to see you at retreat.
I was "blog-browsing" today and came across this post about Firefighter books, and thought of you and Kade. :) www.notimeforflashcards.com/2012/03/books-about-firefighters-fire-trucks-html