Wild Grape Recipe - Grape Jam

After a bit of morning boxing, Karen (that's me) returned home to the smell of wild grapes. We had picked a bag full on Friday, and left the bag sitting on the floor in the kitchen. The bag sat for 2 days, and I think they were starting to ferment. The question was: jelly or wine? I thought they were a bit too buggy for wine, since the fruit is usually not washed before we make a peasant wine. We rely on the natural yeasts present in and on the fruit to sustain fermentation. We add some water and sugar, crush the fruit, and let it sit in the sun for 8 days. Then the fruit pulp is filtered out, and the bubbly juice sits another week or so with an airlock to ferment further. After the airlock stops bubbling, we chill the wine in the refrigerator. We don't cork or bottle it, we drink it up young. So there were lots of spider webs, wormy grapes, dried up grapes, and just plain not nice grapes in the bag. I decided to make jelly.

I used a recipe from Billy Joe Tatum's Wild Foods Field Guide and Cookbook. I washed and stemmed the grapes, them smushed them up and added about a cup of water to the pot. Then I cooked them for 10 minutes, until they were nice and juicy. Then Robert came home from kayaking and helped me run the juicy pulp through our Roma sauce maker and food strainer contraption to get a dark purple, pulpy juice. Then it was jelly making time, and we got 8-1 cup jars. There was a bit of juicy pulp left over, so that is being dried into fruit leather. These wild grape jellies are incredible!



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Wild Grape jelly/jam makes about 8-1c. jars

5 c. pulpy grape juice

1 box powdered pectin

6 1/2c. sugar



1. Place juice in a large pot, and whisk in pectin. Bring to a boil, stirring often.

2. Add all of the sugar at once, bring back to a rollong boil and cook 1 full minute, stirring constantly.

3. Remove the pot from the heat and skim off the foam.

4. Ladle into sterile jelly jars and seal.



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So far the tally for this year's wild food jelly marathon:



Wineberry 6-1c. jars 2-1/2c. jars

Blackberry 15-1c. jars 8-1/2c. jars

Wild black cherry 7-1 c. jars 5-1/2c. jars

Mint 10-1c. jars 7-1/2c. jars

Rosehip jelly 4-1c. jars 3-1/2c. jars

Rosehip marmalade 8-1c. jars 2-1/2c. jars

Beach plum 5-1c. jars 4-1/2c. jars

Autumn olive 8-1c. jars 12-1/2c. jars

Tomato juice 6 pints

Wild grape 8-1c. jars



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For the Letterboxing and Leafpeeping gather on October 17, we are adding a giftbag of a small assortment of homemade jellies and a foraging book to the raffle. I hope it is popular!

Karen

Machimoodus State Park

Karen went out this early morning alone for a bit of letterboxing. I came here about a month ago, found a few boxes, and planted Foraging Wineberry at the vista. I returned today to find a few more boxes, taking a different trail.

This is a fantastic place for letterboxing and foraging alike. It appears to be an old farmstead, with fields, outbuildings, ponds, and plenty of stone walls. For boxers, this presents lots of great hiding places, like old gnarled trees, random boulders, and of course, stone walls. Personally, I don't like stone walls as hiding places for boxes. I don't like moving rocks, and am scared of the bugs that are hiding in the dark spots. This is a good place to bring a dog. The trails are pretty easy--old farm roads along mostly level areas. The exceptions are the trails to the vista. The upper vista trail is easier, taking a slower, more gradual uphill way to the vista. The lower vista trail offers two viewing areas, but the trail to the higher viewing area is pretty hairy for that last couple hundred feet. The view is still a bit obscured by leaves, perhaps we'll come back later in autumn. Several boxers have hidden their treasures here--Mojo612, Flutterby, Donutz716, Hez and Grumpy, Bicko and Sniggles, Butterfly, and now The 3 Foragers.


For foraging, old farms present great environments. Represented are often clear fields, overgrown fields, ponds, roadsides, disturbed areas, deep woods, and possibly old fruit trees still bearing fruit. Machimoodus has an abundance of overgrown fields, ponds, and woods. Right at the driveway entrance is one pond ringed by autumn olive bushes, their berry laden branches bent over and touching the ground. I picked a few, they were pretty good. Along the trail in an overgrown field, I saw milkweed, wild carrots, sweet fern and grapes. There are cattails growing in another pond. There are plenty of white oaks producing acorns, and a few hickory trees, along with a lot of beech. At the vista and along the way on the lower vista are wineberry and black raspberry canes.

I did not gather anything this morning, I was focused on the boxing. It was a gloriously chilly morning, the ponds at Machimoodus misty and the grass quite wet with dew. Overall, a good boxing day, with a nice walk along with the chipmunks and chickadees.

On another note, I stopped at Babcock Pond on my way home to check on the Foraging Water Lily box we had planted there. I had noticed the water level was very low, probably due to the lack of rain lately. I ended up moving the box from the root ball in the water to a 3 sister tree right near to where it was. I removed the "extreme" designation, as the box is now easy to walk to with no watercraft needed.

http://www.photorobg.com/
Here you can see pictures of wild edible plants.