Grape Jelly

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Is it worth canning if you have to buy the fruit?

I have a fondness and a nostalgia for Concord grapes. Growing up, we had loads of them growing on the stonewalls lining the driveway to my grandparent’s farm. Every September , we would pick and pick and gorge ourselves on grapes picked as we walked up and down the lane, so much sometimes our fingers stained purple. Boxes and boxes of them would be heaped into the house, and placed in the porch until Gram could deal with them.

Grape juice, grape jelly, cold storage, wine, snacks for us to take in our lunches to school……we couldn’t get enough because we knew it wasn’t going to last. And it didn’t. And now there are very few of those 100 year old vines left and they are diseased.

So when I seen these organic Concord grapes at the local store for $4.99/2L box, you can be darn sure that even though I only went in for lemon juice, I came out with 4 boxes of these.

I used 2 boxes to crush and strain the juice, and then added add pectin and organic cane sugar. We buy the sugar in 50lb bags 2 times a year so roughly $1.25 for sugar and pectin I got on sale last year for $1.00 a box. The jars and lids and rings I had.

So total cost of the batch was $12.25

And I got 10 jars of grape jelly at $1.23/jar.

You can’t find organic grape jelly for under $6 a jar.

So was it worth it financially? Absolutely.

Although the memories that came with it are priceless to me.

Sometimes we preserve food with the heart.

PS Because I love you, I’ll give you Grammie’s secret for killer sweet and sour meatballs: she always added a jar of grape jelly! We still do this

Love Jenn xx