strike that

sweet

Moving from New York City to Oregon was an education. I learned when to plant which vegetables, and how to make dishes on a pottery wheel, and how to mend clothes, and other basic life-sustaining skills. The sorts of skills that my parents worked their whole lives so that I would never have to learn, because this was a sign of success, except that it ultimately just left me feeling uneasily unaware about how all the things around me worked. Sometimes parents just can’t win.

I also learned how to can things. Which for you northeastern urban folk is the process by which you take fresh food (perhaps out of your very own garden!) and preserve it in little glass jars for later. First I made blackberry jam, and then applesauce, tomatoes and tomato sauce, plum preserves. And one of the best things about canning is that, like with baking bread, you end up with more than you might really want to use in a practical time frame. So you get to give the extras away.

The first time I made jam I sent it in small padded packages to friends back east, because I thought it would be a cool Oregony thing to get in the mail. But I think the little jars of jam mostly just aroused suspicion. How quickly the pacific northwest made a New Yorker eerily domestic. And, is this really safe?

But what I really wanted to tell you about was grape jelly. Which I made last night for the first time.

We have three kinds of grape vines in our backyard, and two of them are currently filled with grapes. Even with constant grape-eating there are bunches and bunches spoiling on the vine. So this is what you do.

You fill a big metal bowl - preferably propped on your hip harvest-style – until it is overflowing with grape bunches. You sit on the front porch sorting the grapes, pulling out the stems and tossing them into the rosebushes, and you talk with your neighbors about pumpkins. You fill the bowl with cold water and swirl the grapes around, washing them gently and well. You tip the bowl into a large saucepot and roll the grapes in.

You realize you have no appropriate utensil for grape-mashing, so you use your hands. You open and close your fists in the increasingly liquid stew, releasing a sharp sweettart scent and a flood of deep purple juice that stains your skin. You pop the most persistent grapes one at a time between your thumb and forefinger, and they snap open with the satisfaction of bubblewrap.

You boil the pulpy seedy soup for ten minutes until the kitchen smells like candy and wine. You pour the still steaming mix into a strainer, pressing the empty skins against the sides with a wire whisk. Cloudy juice spills through.

You heat the juice and pour in cup after cup of sugar, stirring as the mixture becomes thick and dark and glossy. You stir in the pectin that will help the jelly set. You ladle it into seven jam jars lined up on the counter while listening to Michelle Shocked sing Strawberry Jam and you screw on the lids fingertip-tight. You arrange them on a circular rack and plunge them into fiercely boiling water, and the heat causes all the air inside each jar to bubble out.

You set the jars on a cloth and you turn the music down and you wait. The jars cool and the air inside contracts and the lids are sucked down, sealing in the jam. And when this happens they make the most marvelous sound, which is the greatest delight of jam making.

Pop.

posted by tortaluga @ 10:20 AM