My friend has a friend with wild grapes and chokecherries growing on her farm land and they came over with four ice cream buckets of grape and chokecherry juice for a jelly making session last week. We made four batches, two of each, and experimented with regular powdered pectin, low/no sugar powdered pectin and liquid pectin. I ended up with over 20 jars we will slowly use and/or give away. We tried some on Paul’s fresh bread along with our homemade Chicken Wild Rice Soup lunch. Once the jelly sets and we each open the different jars through the winter, I will report on our favorite recipe.
This weekend, another friend gifted me her entire white grape harvest which came to about 50 pounds of beautiful grapes at peak ripeness. Paul and I cleaned, de-stemmed and cooked them in two large canning pots. After lots of straining, some light mashing and a great big mess we were left with 3 gallons of beautiful juice. I did some calculating; there are 16 cups in a gallon and you need 5 cups of juice for each batch of jelly which means to use it all up in jelly we would need to make about 10 batches, each of which would yield about 7 cups. This would require 70 cups of sugar and 10 boxes of Sure-Jell and would yield approximately 70 one cup jars of jelly. Yikes! I think we will just focus on using one gallon for jelly making this week and see if we can find any takers for the two remaining gallons. I have heard lots of folks freeze fresh juice for use through the winter months so maybe we should try this as well.
Last week I experimented with Farro which is an ancient grain. It cooks up like barley and is excellent in cold salads. I put some in a tuna salad and added chopped celery, fresh garlic, parsley, mint and a splash of lemon juice to the remaining cooked grain. I loved it! The eggplant continues to roll in so I made another batch of pickled eggplant chutney and an Italian eggplant-tomato dish, both of which went into the freezer. With the use of dry ice, I am hoping we can successfully transport most of this year’s frozen produce to Flagstaff. Paul is balking at the idea but I would hate to lose all this fine food to an electrical outage over the winter.
Paul made Chicken Vegetable Curry served on rice with condiments including: mango chutney, raisins, coconut and chopped peanuts to put on top. For vegetables he used onion, green peppers, carrots and eggplant, all from area gardens. It was really flavorful without being too spicy for our Midwestern supper guests. He also made Ricotta-Spinach Calzones using home-made pizza crust dough. The crust was crusty but, for whatever reason, didn’t match the crust you get in a good pizza place. We used some of our frozen greens in the tasty stuffing which included kale and chard along with the spinach. Finally, this weekend he made Stewed Pork & Black Beans served on rice. It had a delicious flavor but was way too spicy hot for me. What do you expect when you use 6 jalapeno peppers in a recipe? He enjoyed it again for breakfast Sunday morning with fried eggs on top. Did I mention he was sick with an awful head cold all week? I guess I am not the only worker bee in the house, at least in the kitchen! Plus, he took a walk every day; what a trooper! Did I mention he is flying to Flagstaff next week to hike in the mountains through the month of October? He says he needs to lose weight and get in shape for his planned hiking trip in South America this winter. I think he has just burned himself out in the kitchen this summer and needs a break. Hmmmm…I wonder what I will do while he is away?