We can grow a lot of great things in our county and almost every variety of grape, except Concord I am told. So there lay the challenge! Some 20 plus years ago, I received a concord grape cutting from New York and planted it where I thought we would get the most wind chill. Our side of the world has a daily afternoon typhoon that will really bring the wind chill down at night… making for great bonfires and — of course — concord grapes. The dusting on the grapes is actually natural yeast, something that doesn’t usually happen in a vineyard until it is quite mature… things started to ferment right away when I pressed the grapes and for a moment I thought I might make wine instead…
Rather than just snack on our grapes this year, we endeavored to make some jam! There required a little more preparation than I intended, I went out and bought a ‘food mill’ from Bed , Bath & Beyond to easily separate out the troublesome seeds. We have many wild blackberries and such in the area and for years we were surrounded by them (think Sleeping Beauty’s Castle and you get the idea!) So, this is the first time we actually needed anything like a food mill.
Concord has a lot of its own pectin so many recipes exclude adding any… and I wanted to use honey rather than any other sugar… so we did a bit of recipe tweaking.
I am looking forward to toast tomorrow at breakfast! BTW, my daughter drew me as ‘chef bear’ …a family moniker.
Roger