Last year at this time, I was drowning in peaches and nectarines, the tomatoes were just beginning to ripen, and the grapes weren’t going to be ready for nearly another month.

This year, we never got any nectarines (thanks a lot, funky spring), we finished up the peaches over a week ago, and I’m in the middle of tomatoes and grapes. It feels weird to be so far ahead of ourselves, seasonally, but it’s going to be nice to wrap up the garden a little early.

On Saturday I turned our first grapes into jelly. I think grape jelly might just be my all-time favorite jelly. It’s so rich and vibrant. And it’s so terribly easy to make. One juicer load yields enough grape juice for three batches of jelly … which equals exactly 12 pints and 3 half pints.

When making jams and jellies, I almost always refer to the handy-dandy guide that I’ve saved from a long-ago purchased box of Sure-Jell.

Instead of Sure-Jell, though, I use Natural Dutch Gel. I buy it in bulk, and come jelly-making season, we plow through the stuff. (I’ve already made six batches of peach jam, and I made three more batches of grape jelly yesterday.)

Grape Jelly
Adapted from the Sure-Jell pamphlet

5 cups unsweetened grape juice
7 cups sugar
½ cup natural Dutch gel

Wash the jars (four pints and one half-pint) and place in a 200 degree oven. Set the lids in a saucepan of hot water so the rubber can soften.

Pour the juice into a large soup pot. (The boiling jelly will rise up quite high, so make sure you have lots of space.) Add the Dutch gel and stir to combine. Bring the mixture to a boil, stirring occasionally.

Once the juice is boiling, stir in the sugar. Bring the mixture to a boil again and boil hard for one minute.

Remove the kettle from the heat and ladle the jelly into the jars. Wipe the rims, lid, and screw on the rings. Set the jars on a towel and don’t touch them for at least 12 hours.

PS. This is my 1000th post! One thousandth. ONE THOUSANDTH!

This same time, years previous: whole wheat buttermilk waffles, earthy ponderations, part two, cold curried corn soup

On Sunday morning I got up early, dressed for church, and then, while the family still slept, I drove over to my brother’s house. My brother had asked me if I’d be willing to take some pictures for their band‘s new CD.

I took a few—three hundred and eighty-nine, to be exact.

It’s a good thing I took so many. A lot of the pictures turned out blurry—a combination of the cloudy morning and the wrong lens. Then there were the usual half-shut eyes and telephone poles shooting out of heads and awkward poses.  

How about you sit on the junk pile! Or, Why don’t I stand on the deck and take some pictures of you craning-straining to look up at me?

But some of them turned out nice in spite of myself. Thankfully. 

And then the baby got out of the house and joined the shoot, grassy toes and all.

Not all of the pictures were of the band.

I was putting my camera in the van when my sister-in-law asked if I’d take some pictures of their family. But of course!

Lately, their older daughter has been suffering from a moderate to
severe case of camera shy-itis, so while I snapped pictures, I yammered
about rainbows and their new kitchen and how old she was and such.

The distraction helped. But then Little Sis yawned real big, so I called it quits and wrapped things up.

The end.

This same time, years previous: two-minute peanut butter chocolate cake, red raspberry ice cream, oven-roasted Roma tomatoes, earthy ponderations, part one

This same time, years previous: basic fruit crisp, this is what crazy looks like, how to get your refrigerator clean in two hours, two morals