Canning fun

[protus]

Well i got a wild hair up my rear the other week. Seems muscadine grapes are in season down here now. They grow wild all over my AO. So starting around wed. or so i started to collect them here and there. These are not as big as some home/farm grown ones but they did/do taste good. Plus i haven't canned anything in about 4 months so it was a good refresher that got the whole family involved!

Sat AM we headed out, family in tow with s small bucket to a spot i had laready spotted a bunch of grapes. I let my 4 year old and wife pick as many as they wanted. Needless to say my 4 yr old figured out that they "taste" good. two days prior they were "yucky". So i ended up with a purple fingered kid and maybe 1/2 of what she picked was put in the bucket . Made me giggle when she keep going " one for me..but daddy,i have to make sure they are good enough for us..." .
Anyhow. Once back at the house, we started to sort and juice them. Then we took the juice and made a simple "grape" jelly. It is pretty much just juice,pectin, and sugar. The recipe can be found in the Ball book.
I wanted to use our pressure canner and be all hsld, but wife drug out our water bath canner instead. either way simple and easy. Well here are some pics. Making this stuff is so easy there aint much to talk about it. The last 2 years we made 3 batches of jelly ( apple,grape,mixed berry) from the same recipe. My wife watches kids as "work" and we have yet to buy any store bought jellies in that time frame. Maybe 20$ worth of jars,lids,juice,sugar etc was needed. We have also done marmalade's/conserves. But they take longer ( i let the wife make those,,i dont have the mind for the wait.).
well here ya go. 56k death time.


grapes-


after being picked off, cleaned . We juice them,well my 4 yr old did lol she loved it.


Then the juice is put in a pot to be heated/boiled.


stirring in the pectin( watch the color change) and bringing to a boil-


stirring in the sugar and boiling-


Once it has boiled for xx amount of time, the jelly is ready to be place in cans-


and into the canner for iirc 10-12 minutes-


we have one small batch that was set aside for "eating" right away for the next few days.


Folks, if you havent canned yet. Try it. It is simple, easy and at times( like the jelly can save you some $$ over time)
hope you enjoyed it, we had a blast doing it.

[eeyore]

Great post,

My wife and girls usually do cookies for passing out to the boss(es) at Christmas time, (which happens to be evaluation time also). This past year we did jam and pickles, canning is a fun time.

[crossbow]

we spent the past week doing Dills and B&Bs. his week we'll have to do about 70 qts of beets and 50 pints of pickled beets. we do most of the canning out on the bk porch as our flat top ele stove just don't seem to get hot enough fast enough.

wish we had those Muscadine grapes growing around here, we do get a lot of long black berries and the birds must have trans planted some Elderberry bushes at the woods edge, we have some now but they wern't there for the past 50 yrs. I noticed those chubby little fingers on thje juices and figured you had help, it's amazing how doing those things will stick with a kid and make them want to do some on their own when they get older.

[rockriver]

real good post.
excellent description
and mighty motivating !!
rr

[Kat]

Great post! Looks like you guys had a lot of fun. Grape juice concentrate can also be made from muscadines and mixed with seltzer or water. The little one would probably love it!