Last week, one of my neighbors brought me two 5-gallon
buckets filled with concord grapes. She lives kiddy-corner from our backyard in
her mother’s old house. Her mother, Carolyn, was 94 when she died last year. I
remember seeing Carolyn up on her roof just weeks before she died, cleaning her
own gutters and brushing moss off of her roof. Her house has the most
incredible birch tree I’ve ever seen. It spans the entire width of her property
and has branches that swoop down to almost four feet off the ground. Carolyn
would rake the birch leaves in the mornings in a thin housecoat and slippers.
The rest of us would be freezing in the cold rain but she seemed quite happy out there. All of the men in the neighborhood would offer to help, of
course, but she would brush them off dismissively. I really didn’t know her
well since she died shortly after we moved in but I will always think of her
fondly.
When Ann brought the grapes over I was like, Great! I’ve
always wanted to make jelly! And then I was
like, Oh. I’ll have to make jelly now.
Mom?
My mom makes the best jelly in the history of the world. I
remember the grape and apple jelly she used to make when we were kids and I
knew I could make it work if she
made it helped. She brought over
the supplies and we followed the recipe on the back of the Sure-Jel pack with a
few minor adjustments. Needless to say, it turned out wonderfully.
Some things I
learned while making jelly with my mom: you have to wait patiently and really let things come to a rolling boil; you must never squeeze the bags of fruit as they drip juice (it
will make the jelly cloudy); and you will use more sugar in seven jars of jelly
than you will have used in your entire life combined.
It’s fun and pretty easy
and you should try it, too!
