DIY Jam...Canning is "grape"!

I'm sick today. Two days ago, I had a bad sore throat and felt unwell, but yesterday I woke up at 5 a.m., felt fine, and had a wonderfully productive day. I made my husband breakfast in bed, then went back downstairs and made chili, sweet cornbread, lime meltaway cookies, and blueberry muffins. I had my sister over for lunch and had a great visit. Then, after a nap, I cleaned the house, chit chatted on the phone, and did some business work in our basement.

Today, though, my head is stopped up and balloon-like, I'm dizzy, with a runny nose, and my scratchy throat is back. However, it's a great day to be sick. The weather has turned cool, and I've put on my flannel pajamas. I have a good book, and a good knitting project. Best of all, I've had a very productive week, and finished my work yesterday, so I don't have to feel guilty about a sick day on the couch.

This has been a busy week indeed! Under the watchful eyes of the cats...

...I've been outside, dodging mosquitoes and harvesting what I could from the garden. Finally, we're getting a nice amount of tomatoes.

I have to be careful, though. Other creatures find the tomatoes and their sheltering leaves useful, like this mantis.

A yellow-striped army worm (Spodoptera ornithogalli) is in seventh heaven here. They like the tomatoes themselves, and the leaves too. A group of army worms can absolutely decimate crops in an area before taking off, en masse, to the next banquet.

I didn't see any other army worms that day, thankfully. They're destructive, but I couldn't help but admire his symmetrical markings and soft coloring.

Of course, I had to pick more bouquets. The cosmos are going to seed fast so I've got to get the flowers while I've got a chance!

I harvested other things, too. A friend with a peach tree invited me to take some home...

...and also, some of her beautiful Concord grapes. She had so many growing on her single vine that she kept heaping more and more bunches into my little bag.

I ended up with five pounds of grapes!

Five pounds is exactly the amount needed to make a batch of grape jam. Now, I've never made jam before, or canned. I have less-than-promising memories of blown jars and rusty lids in my grandma's larder. Also, I don't have any fancy equipment...the round jar-lifting tongs, the tall pots. But I tell you that with no special equipment and almost no money, I made some pretty fantastic grape jam!

Here's what you will need:

5 pounds of grapes
7 cups of sugar
a box of pectin
1/2 teaspoon butter
mason jars and lids
one or two large pots
tongs (I used Target's OXO brand)
Cheesecloth

That's not too bad, right?

First, fill your two large pots with water and bring to a boil. In batches, you'll need to sterilize your mason jars and lids by boiling them for at least 5 minutes each. I was able to fit 3 jars per pot so this didn't take much time at all! Then I set them out on a clean cloth and carefully put the lids back on top.

Next, you need to separate the grapes from the stems and wash them. Small spiders sometimes make little web nests in between the grapes, so pluck carefully!

Then, you need to mash your grapes. You can use your hands, but I used a potato masher.

Put your crushed grapes back into a pot and add a cup of water. Bring to a boil and simmer, covered, for 10 minutes.

Let it cool and then use a cheesecloth to strain the juice. What's left behind is a pretty disgusting pile of pulp...throw that away.

Here's the quick and easy finale! Measure out 5 cups of grape juice, add your box of pectin, and bring to a boil. Stir in that bit of butter...it keeps your jam from foaming too much. Add your sugar and boil for one minute. And...that's it! Ladle the liquid into the waiting jars and seal.

One other thing. An optional step here is to give your jam a 'water bath.' It is not "preserved" in its current state...you must go one step further to ensure that no bacteria infects your jam. A water bath is easy. Bring a pot of water to a boil and gently lay your filled jars inside, and then lay them on their sides with the tongs. They should be completely submerged. Let them boil there for 5 minutes, and use tongs to remove. The jam can take up to 24 hours to completely cool and set. As it cools, you'll hear your lids pop. If you can toggle the lid centers up and down, your jam didn't seal. Either try another water bath or just stick it in your fridge and plan on eating it in the next few weeks. Your preserved jam, though, will last for months!

I got five 10 ounce jars of jam, plus one 12 ounce jar of leftover grape juice, from my 5 pounds of grapes. The whole process, from start to finish, took about 2 1/2 hours.

It was a really fun way to spend an afternoon! Of course, I had to get my rubber stamps out and make labels.

The jam isn't purple like grocery store grape jam...it's almost raspberry-colored. And delicious.

Spread on toast, it's our new favorite nighttime snack.

I really hope you give it a try this fall! I've included the recipe in easy-to-read format below. Have a great week!

Grape Jam

From multiple sources

Nearly fills 5 12 ounce jars

Ingredients and Tools

5 pounds of grapes

7 cups of sugar

½ teaspoon butter

1 box pectin

Tongs

2 big pots

At least 6 12 ounce jars

Sterilize your jars

Wash, and boil for 5 minutes each

Make the grape juice

Weigh out 5 pounds of grapes

Crush with a potato masher

Add to pot with 1 – ½ cups water and bring to a boil

Simmer, covered, for 10 minutes.

Cool and strain the grape mixture. You’ll have about 7 cups.

Make the jam

Start a second pot boiling for your water bath.

Measure 5 cups of grape juice into pot.

Add 1 box pectin and ½ teaspoon butter.

Bring to a boil, stirring frequently.

Once it’s you’ve got a rolling boil, toss in 7 cups of sugar. Bring back to rolling boil and stir for one minute. Remove from heat. Skim off foam if applicable.

Canning and Storing

Pour liquid into prepared canning jars, leaving an inch open at the top. Wipe off threads and put on lids, but don’t screw them on too tightly. Once the water in your water bath is almost boiling, add jars and let boil for 5 minutes. Remove and let cool. As they cool, you’ll hear the tops pop. After they’ve cooled 24 hours, tap the button on top. If it toggles up and down, it’s not sealed. If it stays down, you’re safe. Jam should be good for six months.

Springtime Pasta-bilities

We've had our fair share of sun - and rain - lately. The adage April showers bring May flowers is certainly true, but our March showers have brought us a bounty of blooms, as well.

Magnolia trees are flowering everywhere!

Their delicate pink petals cover the ground beneath the trees. It's so peaceful and almost otherworldly.

Also common in our area are flowering Bradford Pear trees. Even though the blossom smell is a little unpleasant, the masses of tiny white flowers make up for it in spades.

One with a nice smell and clusters of beautiful blossoms is the quince shrub. I've seen these growing wild and also tamed into sculpted bushes, and both look quite nice. A few of these flowering branches in water would make an amazing bouquet!

Of course, one of the most popular trees around here is the redbud. These little flowers are going to pop open any second!

All of the trees are flowering. They make our springtime walks so enjoyable!

Closer to home, we've got real progress. Our viburnum bushes will be in bloom any day, and they have a wonderful smell. The blossoms are tiny and pink - really lovely.

The squirrels have eaten most of our peony bushes, but a few in the front yard survived. This unlikely stalk will be a full-grown bush within a month! Peonies are one of my very favorite flowers and make an amazing - and effortless - bouquet.

Our tulip petals are just starting to open up. We just have a small patch of tulips this year...we're saving our stash of bulbs for our next home!

One of my favorites - the violet - is out. When the grass dries, I'll pick many of these to press and dry for cards in the summer and ice bowls in the winter.

It's almost like we have a violet carpet right now!

Of course, there's the plant whose identity is an absolute mystery. It's a perennial, and it grows about 2 feet tall in the summer. Does anyone have a guess? I absolutely love lime green plants. I have some lime green zinnia seeds that I'm planning on planting this year - I can't wait!

We've had some other surprises popping up lately. Last week I saw not one, but two cats in our pine tree! This is Sylvia...

...and this is Octavio. I don't know who they belong to, if anyone, but I set out some food for them and hope that they stay safe!

My snapdragon seedlings have been growing like crazy. I've told myself over and over that it's perfectly normal - and necessary - to thin them out, but I really don't like throwing any away.

Despite my best efforts to be stern with myself, I ended up repotting about 20 seedlings. If all grow well, we're going to have a snapdragon forest in our back yard!

I tried something new in the kitchen recently. Now, it's no secret around here that I'm coveting the KitchenAid pasta attachment set...the roller, the slicer, and the ravioli stamp. It's also no secret that my husband is ultimately sensible, and said that it sounded like something that we could invest in, but later this year. For some reason, he didn't see the urgency. Sigh...so sensible! I really want the set, so I was a little dismayed to discover how easy it was to make pasta...by hand.

I decided on the spur of the moment to make tortellini a few weeks ago...a little over an hour before supper. I did a little research and saw that most basic pasta recipes are fairly similar.

Basic Pasta

3 cups flour
3 eggs
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
2 tablespoons olive oil
water as needed

Combine your dry ingredients and create a "well" in the center. Add eggs and mix until combined.

Your dough will be really dry, so once the eggs are fully incorporated, add the olive oil and continue to mix. If your dough still seems dry, add a bit of water until you've reached the consistency you want: not sticky or tacky, but not dry, either.

Let your dough rest for 20 minutes under a towel to keep it from drying out. Once it's rested, pull off a portion of the dough, leaving the rest covered. Generously flour your work surface and get your rolling pin out. Roll, roll, roll your dough until it achieves a paper-thin state. It should be nearly translucent. I wanted to tell Todd that this took an hour, but honestly, it just took a few minutes. Although, I should point out that the KitchenAid attachment would've been even quicker! ;)

Once it's rolled out, use a cookie cutter to cut out circles for your tortellini. Quick and easy! Once you've cut up your dough, pull out another piece from the main ball and repeat until all dough is cut. Be sure to keep a towel over your dough circles...they dry out really easily!

Next, choose your filling. I was in a hurry, so I quickly defrosted some spinach and added a pinch of spinach and cheese to the center of each circle.

Wet your finger with a little water and run it along the inside edge of one side of the circle. Then, fold the circle over and press the edges to seal.

To make the classic tortellini shape, just wrap that piece of dough around your finger and seal the edges. Set your sealed tortellini on a plate to dry.

I've heard that pasta should be dried before being cooked. I let my tortellini sit out for about 15 minutes, and that worked out well. Really, your first group of tortellini will be ready to boil by the time you've finished sealing and wrapping your last group.

Then, just boil in salted water for 5 minutes and...you're done. YUM!!

Honestly, I can't believe how easy it is to make homemade pasta, and I know I'll be doing it again soon, KitchenAid or no KitchenAid. Todd couldn't believe how tasty it was...he said that it was the best pasta he'd ever had! And this recipe makes a LOT of tortellini...about a pound. We had a few meals of tortellini with pasta sauce, and then I made a huge vat of spring vegetable soup with the remainder of the tortellini.

You should give it a try...all you need is a little elbow grease and a free hour. You'll be rewarded with an unbelievably tender and flavorful meal.

Good luck!

April Fooling Around with Paper Mache

Despite my successful alliance with Google Calendar, I'm a bit behind schedule this spring. I meant to set up a whole seed starting system, with heat mats and fluorescent lights, so that I could start a virtual meadow of flowers in our basement. I bought my seeds and my soil, but didn't get the other things ordered in time. As my grandpa used to say, necessity is the mother of invention!

In our region, the last frost date is May 7th, so this past weekend I set up one flat indoors. Most of the flowers I grow are decidedly unfussy and their seeds can be sown directly into the garden soil, but I decided to start some tall snapdragons now. Here we go!

First, I found an oblong plastic container. This was intended to be Tabitha's first litter box but it was a bit too small...but perfect for this project! I started out by filling the bottom with pebbles to ensure proper drainage. I don't want my seedlings to have wet feet!

Then a layer of soil on top.

I cut 6 toilet paper rolls in half and set them in the soil. Cardboard is biodegradable, so the seedlings that grow within can be planted, roll and all, directly into the garden.

I filled them with seed starting soil, misted them with warm water, and planted the seeds.

I was afraid that our house might not be warm enough for the seeds to germinate, hence the need for the heat mat, which lies under your flats to provide steady warmth. Since I'm striking out on my own with this project, I decided to improvise with a hot water bottle.

Why not? Hot water bottles retain heat for about 8 hours. Every morning and every night, I fill up the hot water bottle and place it under my "flat," which is carefully covered in plastic wrap to help the soil stay moist.

This appears to have been a highly successful experiment. I wasn't expecting germination for 2 - 3 weeks...but this morning, I saw some lovely green seedlings unfurling...after only 4 days!

A .20 packet of seeds and a hot water bottle...what a team! I can't wait to see how many snapdragons I get out of this little experiment.

April means that Easter is coming, and I've been preparing with some small crafty projects. This project was at the top of my list, and so inexpensive to put together! I don't think I spent over $3 for the whole thing.

I bought a foam ring and some plastic eggs at JoAnn Fabrics a few weeks ago.

I bought some very nice linen a few years ago that sustained a bit of water damage. I cut it up in strips, working around the bad spots. I pinned the end of my fabric strip to the ring...

...and wrapped it around, carefully pinning the end.

I repeated this process until the entire ring was covered.

Then it was time for the messy part! I made homemade "mod podge," or paper mache glue. I mixed one part flour to five parts water and boiled for about 5 minutes. It makes a perfect glue.

I took some old newspapers and cut them into strips. Each strip was glued around a plastic egg and left to dry for about 15 minutes.

Then, I cut the paper at each end into long strips...

...and, with healthy dollops of my homemade glue, smoothed each strip down over the ends of the egg.
This was a fairly difficult process for me, and I think it will be a long time before I try another paper mache project. It was nearly impossible for me to get a nice, smooth result, but at the end of the day I was so happy to be finished that I didn't mind my strangely lumpy results.

After the eggs dried, I used wood glue to attach some moss that I had left over from my IKEA planter project to the bottom of the wreath.

I glued a few eggs on top of the moss and let it dry...

...then, I attached a simple ribbon. Voila! A simple Easter-themed wreath, done on the cheap. My original plan was to cover the entire wreath with eggs, but I couldn't bear to paper mache more than one batch.

As I told my husband: it didn't turn out EGGS-actly like I'd hoped, but I still like it!

Last Friday was April Fools Day, and I couldn't wait to pull a prank on my sister. I bought two rolls of Starburst and a bag of Skittles. I cut the orange Starbursts in half...

...and piled them, and the green Skittles, on top of these vanilla cupcakes I whipped up.

Peas and carrots!

I used the yellow Starburst as the butter pat on these "mashed potatoes," which are, of course, white cupcakes. I cooked up some homemade caramel and drizzled it over the top for gravy. Perfect!

Unfortunately, the "chicken drumsticks" (layered cupcakes with toasted coconut and a white chocolate 'bone') weren't as convincing...but it helped when I put everything in this old muffin tin, which reminded me of a T.V. dinner tray!

She was definitely fooled. I couldn't forget about the meal, though. I baked some big, buttery biscuits and cut out their centers. Inside, I hid a spicy turkey meatball. Then, I whipped up some creamy mashed potatoes (I can't remember the last time I made mashed potatoes with the skin off!) and "iced" the "cupcakes" with them. She took a big bite...and the look on her face was priceless!

Hope you were able to pull off a few April Fools pranks of your own. Have a great week!