Homemade Grape Jelly

Kevin called me a couple days from a vineyard.  On impulse, he had just bought 12 pounds of concord grapes.

To me, concord grapes only mean one thing--it is time to make jelly.  When we were kids, there were a lot of wild grapes growing in the woods around our house.  We would pick them, and my mom would make grape jelly.  It was so delicious, that to this day, I don’t like the taste of store grape jelly.  It tastes fake like grape candy.  

I have made jelly in the past, so I know it is easy to do.  I never made grape becasue the grapes are no longer there.  Kevin was completely ignorant about the process.  He didn’t even know what pectin was.

We plucked about half the grapes, cooked them down, made juice by running them through my food mill, added sugar, brought them to a boil, added the pectin, boiled another minute and we were done.  Seven cups of jelly, just like that.

Kevin was so worried it didn’t set that he wanted to quit in defeat.  We still had enough juice left for another batch, so I pushed him on to do another batch.  Twenty minutes later, we had 7 more cups.

It is delicious--as tasty as I remembered.  Kevin loves it, too.  I wonder what kind of jelly we should make next?

(We made grape juice from the balance of the grapes--and it is delicious!)