I am right now waiting for the cooked grapes to cool, so I can run the grapes through the cheesecloth to get to the smooth grape juice. It’s my favorite part of making grape jelly because the color is beautiful. The purple stains the cheesecloth and my hands, and I feel so deeply connected to this food. The color makes me want to dye fabrics, but at the moment, I can’t think of any practical thing to make. If you know of an idea, please let me know.

My least favorite part of this jelly-making process is picking the grapes off of the stems. Five pounds of clean grapes are required for my recipes, and it’s a slow go picking like a million grapes and measuring out five pounds. I was telling myself tonight, “We eat some really slow food around here.”

It’s so worth it though, at least I feel this way most of the time. I’m not going to lie, sometimes cooking everything from scratch wears me out, but usually, it’s a joy. The grape jelly is absolutely a joy. This is only my second year to ever make homemade grape jelly from my neighbor’s grapes, and the last time was before the pandemic. I was a little rusty on my first batch this year. It was a little thin but still so delicious. My son has eaten two jars so far.

Tonight, I get my second and last chance to make it perfect. I am altering the recipe I was following, hoping to correct the issue. I am hopeful, as, over the years, I have become pretty good at tweaking recipes. I can normally tweak them before I try them, but sometimes, I don’t know enough and just follow the recipe.

This grape jelly is a part of my series of jellies I have made this year as gift sets for a few friends and family. I still have to make the apple butter, and I hope to get to that this week as well. The trouble with slow food is that you have to time for it, I suppose.

Hopefully, this jelly will be beautiful though. It’s my grown daughter’s favorite jelly, and I can’t wait to share some with her. She told me last week that “she’s a big jam and jelly” person. I hoped she would be. Not everyone is, but I surely am. I can’t eat store-bought jam or jelly at all anymore. There’s nothing like low-sugar, organic grape jelly. I wish for everyone to taste a bite at least once. It would make people smile. Maybe it would make their heart smile too.