Saturday, October 15, 2005, 05:45
A Whole New Perspective
I made two more quarts of spaghetti sauce on Friday. I washed the tomatoes and put them through the blender Thursday night, and then Friday morning at 8 a.m. I turned the burner on low. By 4 p.m., the spaghetti sauce was thick enough to go into jars. Throughout the day, I went into the kitchen every 10 or 15 minutes to stir the spaghetti sauce.
If I want to look at it that way, it took 4 hours per quart. Although, if I consider the amount of time I spent picking the tomatoes, washing them and putting them through the blender, not to mention the time I spent planting the tomatoes last spring and watering them throughout the summer, it's probably closer to 6 hours per quart.
I like to think my time is worth $10 an hour. I don't know if it *is* but that's what I like to think. (Hah!) So at that rate, the spaghetti sauce is "worth" $60 per quart. So far, I've made 8 quarts, so that's $480 worth of spaghetti sauce.
Man, that's some EXPENSIVE spaghetti sauce. I hope we enjoy it. . .
Lady Bugs: The lady bugs are back. Every fall, if we get some warm days in October, they collect around our house, looking for a place to spend the winter. So far, they are *nothing* like I've seen them other years -- maybe only a tenth as many as I have seen other times. Still, enough of them are finding their way into the house. I had to vacuum my office ceiling three times on Friday. And when Randy got home, he went downstairs and vacuumed up a bunch more from around the garage door with the shop vac. One year they were so bad, they were coming into the basement by the thousands. I sprayed them with bug spray, swept them up, and tossed them outside by the snow-shovel-full. I know the lady bugs are useful out in the fields because they eat tons of aphids. I would rather they did not come into my house by the thousands, however, or even by the hundreds.
LeAnn R. Ralph
Friday, October 14, 2005, 16:41
Now *That's* Grape!
I finally got around to picking my wild grapes. There's a grapevine behind the barn that Randy has built an arbor for -- and this year it had quite a few grapes on it. Of course, I figured that it would, seeing as we had so much hot, dry weather this year. Grapes like it hot and dry. It's been a few years since the grapevine has had so many grapes. I suppose I ought to have picked the grapes a month ago, but I like to wait until the grapevine has lost some of its leaves. It's easier to see the grapes that way, and then I don't feel as if I ought to have a machete with me just to get at the fruit.
When we moved here 10 years ago, the grapevine behind the barn was nothing more than a single sprig. It has now turned into a jungle, climbing the elm tree behind the barn and climbing over what is left of the apple tree that was started by an apple eaten by my old Standardbred mare, Irene -- or maybe my pony, Dusty, ate the apple. Dusty and Irene have been gone now for more than 15 years, so that tells you how old the apple tree is.
Over the years, the grapevine behind the barn has grown steadily. I'm glad it's a female vine. I have noticed that we have far more male wild grapevines around here than female vines. You don't have to look very far to find male vines. Sometimes you have to look long and hard to find female vines that will bear grapes.
I picked the grapes late afternoon on Wednesday, and Wednesday evening, I started making the grape juice. Thursday night, I made grape jelly. Except that I don't think it's going to end up grape jelly. I think we're going to have three pints and a quart of grape pancake syrup.
The Surejell recipe called for 5 cups of grape juice, and I had 7 cups. Not enough to make a double batch but too much for a single batch. Even if I'd had 10 cups of juice, I did not have enough sugar to make a double batch, anyway. So, I decided to make a single recipe using all of the juice. Either the jelly would set -- or I would end up with pancake syrup.
I had a little left over that I put into a halfpint jar which can sit in the refrigerator until I am ready to use it. Once the jelly in the halfpint had cooled off, I stuck a spoon into it -- and it looks like it's going to be pancake syrup.
As I told Randy, if that's the worst thing that ever happens to me, that my grape juice ends up as pancake syrup rather than jelly, I will have lived a charmed life, indeed.
I can tell you this, though. Whether the wild grapes make jelly or pancake syrup, it is positively the most *grape* flavor I have ever tasted. No matter how hard they try, Welch's will never come anywhere close.
LeAnn R. Ralph