Thursday, October 8, 2009

Mission Accomplished!

I started out with this:
And ended up with this:

So it was about an hour hunched over the sink, de-stemming the grapes, picking out the rotten ones and the hard little green ones. Ohhh, my back was not happy with me at all. Plus, my potato masher is a cheap piece of crap, so I ended up squishing them by hand. Which would have been ok, except they'd been in the fridge (cold!!) and there were 17 POUNDS of them.
I ran out of time, so I didn't can the juice until today. I added a scant 2/3 c. of sugar. Four glorious quarts!
I have enjoyed my canning adventures thus far, but I am glad that it's winding down now... it has been hard for me to handle these projects by myself at home with the kids running around. Mostly, I just wanted to get it all DONE, so I didn't waste as much produce as I did last year. I'm down to the last two weeks of CSA, and I have no plans at this time to use what I get in my Spud delivery for preserving. Now I have more of an idea what kinds of things I want to put up next year, so I can (ha! Pun!) plan accordingly...

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Those look beautiful, and they will taste so good when you enjoy them.

After some of my experiences last year, I have had an easier time evaluating what to preserve and what not to preserve this year. Like, I got 20 pounds of apples yesterday instead of 80, and I'm gonna keep it to that, I think.

Perhaps next year I'll be able to go a little calmer on the pickling.