When I go to my book club that meets in my building, we often do it pot luck style. I tend to bring cheese and fruit and some sort of cracker/bread. If you must know, I tend to match my cheese to the location of which we are reading…

But anyway…

I few months ago I went to the Farmer’s Market with hopes of purchasing second harvest raspberries. I had been to a particular stall the week before and the raspberries were just delicious. As I was waiting on line, the person in front of me was a sous chef from a local restaurant. If your restaurant is near the Union Square Farmers Market the ingredients often some from here. This is typically a win/win. except when the sous chef in front of you buys every single raspberry the purveyor has…

Ok- now I was stuck. It was late august and I did not want to start on the apple train, because I know that I was in for a winter of apples…

I saw one stand had grapes.

So I bought the grapes.

I took them home and washed them, and then realized that I had been anesthetized into buying supermarket grapes which are seedless.

Farmer’s market grapes are not seedless…

I couldn’t bring grapes with seeds to bookclub- there is no way these women would deem to spit out little pits…

So I ran out to market and bough non offensive supermarket grapes…

But…I still had a half pound of purple concords…what would I do with them?

Hmmm…

I know. I’ll make jam….

Yeah…

par boil so you can get the skins off…

then get all the pits out, when there could be four seeds per grape…

boil them with sugar and lemon….

bleh bleh bleh

I admit the jam was quite tasty.

I don’t ever need to do that again… but hats off to the people who do this for fun…

In the future I will stick to buying my jams and preserves from the stalls at the farmers market, as it is totally worth the money to me.

Moral of the story: don’t assume that everything is as you think it will be. Question and investigate. Advocate for yourself.

43 thoughts on “Grape Jelly”

  6. The thing I miss most about my book club is the excellent cheese selection and the home baked bread. That’s something I may not be able to replicate that easily. As to seeds, I seem to recall regularly eating un-pitted olives without any noticeable discomfort. Perhaps we were less couth than I thought 😀

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  10. Darn those sous chefs. Now, if I were to join a book club, I’d only join one in which the participants would LOVE to spit out their grape seeds as they talked about a book with love and appreciation. As an author, I have a hard time with the book clubs I’ve been invited to, because they’re so critical of the books they’ve chosen. These readers have no idea how hard it is to write a book! I take it personally for the authors. :-0 I think I’ll just stay home and eat grapes (no jelly making, thank you).

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    1. As a reader I’ll toss this in. I totally appreciate how hard it is to write a book, which is why I never give a 1 star review. And I finish every book I read. Yet there are books I don’t like, with no disrespect to the writing process. I just finished a home organizing book. I know the authors worked hard however, it wasn’t a good book. It dealt with organizing as if the reader has cabinets galore and didn’t have to worry about space limitations. To me an organizing book should be able to help people with all sorts of space limits, as well as those with no limits

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      1. I get it! I’m talking more about fiction, but I’m with you. If I get 25 pages into a book and I don’t like it, I just stop. But if I read the entire thing, it’s unlikely I’ll give it anything under 3 stars, since it kept my interest. 🙂 I only review books though that are 4 or 5 stars.

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      2. I won’t stop, out of respect to the author. I figure I can’t really have an opinion if I didn’t read it all. I’m tough with fiction too. I don’t ever give five stars because I don’t think any book is perfect. But I get everyone has different expectations of the reading process. When I do my monthly book review I try to sum up in one or two sentences what I liked or didn’t like about a book

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    1. According to my doctor no way should we eat seeds of any sort. Starts to wear away linings and could lead to diverticulitis. Even healthy seeds and nuts could be a problem

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  20. This made me smile, we have a grape vine in the garden, but the grapes are far to bitter to eat so I make grape jelly with them. I don’t remove the skins or seeds, after cooking I pass the jam through a cloth and leave the juice to set. It makes a lovely jelly/jam.

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