More Frugal Canning

Well, I picked my last batch of concord grapes today and only had about half a bucket.  Now, grape juice is my main juice drink in the winter, so to say I was disappointed with the output would be putting it mildly, so there was no way I was going to be using juice to make jelly. (Especially when you've all seen how much other jellies and jams I have!)

But the kids (and the husband) both asked so nicely...

I was straining the the juice out (for those curious, I garnered another 4 quarts of juice). Still not enough, but better than nothing. Annnd I have to admit; I covered them with too much water, and ended up having to cook it down a bit because of it. (boy, was it too weak!)

And so I'm sitting there, looking at the leavings in the cheesecloth (Note: Cheesecloth...my new favorite thing.  The sort you would use for real cheese; actually called butter cloth, and much finer. You keep much more pulp that way, get a much clearer, cleaner juice and its easier to wash and reuse!).  And I can see plenty of seeds, plenty of skins, but I also see lovely, lovely pulp, just waiting to be harvested out.

 So I put it into my mill. (I hemmed and hawed; the finest strainer, or the medium? I decided the fine was more for raspberry seeds, so the medium should be fine.  It appears to be just fine.)

milling the leavings gave me 4 cups of pulp. (Query: I wonder if the liquid to pulp ratio stays the same? My previous batch 3qts:3c. makes it seem reasonable.)

Regardless, I didn't have time to finish, so put it in a quart mason jar, covered the top with a 1 tbs layer of lemon juice, and put it in the refridgerator.

The recipe is as follows:

1c. pulp
1c. sugar
1 tbs. pectin
(I like this, because its easy to make a sliding scale for your pulp.)
heat up pulp, add pectin and bring to a full boil. Add the sugar, and bring to a full boil again, keeping it at rolling for a minute.  Process in hot water bath as usual, for 10 minutes.

When I made it, i dropped the sugar slightly, only putting in 3c. sugar for the 4 c. pulp and it was just fine.