Inspired Living | Grape Jelly
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I'm always really excited when I try something new and it works out really well. I love the sense of accomplishment, even though perhaps it's slightly exaggerated with me since I'm not an expert in the kitchen (that's Jonathan's area of expertise). This time, the new task was grape jelly. A few weeks ago Jonathan and I were in Prince Edward County and lovely vines dripping with grapes were everywhere. I was so tempted to try them!! So at market last week when I came across bundles of concord grapes for $5 I completely caved and bought them. Their flavour is uncompromised, literally exploding in your mouth, however, Concord grapes have notoriously sour skin. Some people really love that, but after a few bites I could tell I was going to have a hard time getting through the entire batch. Knowing there had to be a way to preserve their amazing flavour I thought I would give grape jelly a try, something I've truthfully always wanted to do. True to style, however, I picked a time when I'm feeling pretty overwhelmed with work (we're hard at work on the new issue!) which left me very relieved to find out that the jelly recipe couldn't have been easier and took less than two hours of actual work, start to finish. I'm not sure what I was expecting, but after getting great colour and perfect gelling I was delighted!! The finished result has all of the flavour of the original grapes but none of the sour. It's going to be tough to go through the batch slowly!
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The recipe I used is from a book I love, Canning & Preserving by Ashley English. You can find the recipe here—compared to a lot of recipes I checked this one has a lot less sugar, which was important for me. Have you felt inspired to try anything new lately? There's so much great produce right now!!! Send us pictures of your project to submissions@puregreenmag.com
PHOTOGRAPHS by Jonathan & Celine MacKay
