Looks like I may have a bumper crop of grapes this year, although I've done nothing to maintain the vines. My question is this; what can you do with grapes? I don't know the variety but they have plenty of seeds. My parents would sometimes make jelly or wine, but this hardly seems worth the time and effort required. Are there any other ideas?
Thanks...
Forget the fruit. Use the leaves for dolmades.
If you get a good food mill, then separating the fruit from the grapes is not so time consuming; then you can have some really tasty jam, or freeze the flesh and use it in everything from water to putting it on pancakes.
Eat them. Minimum time and effort.
Steve
You can just juice them, then sweeten as necessary to taste.
If you use a Victorio strainer, that takes the work out of de-seeding and peeling. Just run they thru whole. That tool is worth it's weight in gold for processing grapes:
I juice them as well but in a steamer. The only thing left is the juice. Just hot pack it and seal them. dilute with water to taste and add sugar to taste. Is my steamer ready Ross?
Yes.
This might be a topic worthy of a little discussion. What are the primary kitchen tools for a gardener?
I use a food mill to get rid of seeds, stems, and skins of currants and grapes. I recently bought a cherry pitter, which is a real help. It's the kind that looks like a meat grinder.
Dianna
_______________________________________________ To reply, please remove "fluff" from my address.
Interesting. Let me mention an idea of mine. We eat huge salads (my garden is 70% greens, though I should have planted melons this year, so warm it is), and a main reason for me mulching everything is that with mulch the greens are usually clean (whereas lettuce from bare soil is inevitably muddy after a rain). But we still have to wash them some. The quickest way is to put them in the salad spinner with water, and spin them. But the load is then a bit heavy, and after a while the (plastic) spinner breaks. So, a primary kitchen too for me would be a metal salad spinner, but I can not find one.
Canning or freezing? LOL!
food mill, everyone needs one really good paring knife, same reason food processor, I chop cilantro leaves, peppers in it. I freeze that in snack bags, mmm cheese dip tomato seeder/mill - one of the italian ones, quarter the sauce tomatoes and run them through.
John!
Dave wrote:
Canning is ruled out as being too much hot steamy work for July and August.
Seems a little vague. I bet I could find some very different things that are all called "food mills."
A knife and a fork.
I have a biological food grinder that empties into an acid-based digester. It's a good system for me.
Penelope
Ok:
this is the kind I am referring to:
http://sh> GA P>
Definitely!
One of my favorite and oft used tools is what we call our "Japanese food processor". Pix here:
Dusty ...
Remember when every house had a "summer kitchen" out in a screened porch? That's the canning kitchen, to be used when it's hotter than a by-god, and you can't work in your normal kitchen.
We build two kitchens in our houses in Alaska, for canning, putting up fish, moose, etc. It keeps the regular kitchen freed-up for making family meals.
Jan
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