Pummelin'

After all the pickin', and pluckin' there's yet another step in this jelly making extravaganza. We had to smash the heck out of those grapes to extract all that yummy juice, oh and we decided to separate out all the seeds as well, you know, for the picky types.

Here are all the tools we used in our pummeling exercises. (Not to be confused with pommeling exercises).

Here I am smashing away. Once again I am making a point to contort my face in some grotesque manner.

This step was repeated some 30 times, maybe even more!
We had a LOT of grapes.

Pulp, what you do NOT want in your jelly.
Brings a whole new visual to "blood pulp."


After I'd smashed for a while I had to dump the juice into jars to await a second and then third straining. Really, this was a strain-uous procedure...okay, sorry, I couldn't help myself. I have to much of my Papa 'K' in me to pass up a pun(good or bad).


Same shot, different angle.
Or if you grew up singing "Silly Songs" like I did: "Same song, second verse,
a little bit louder and a little bit worse."


This is step 3 in the straining process. Somehow I didn't get a picture of step 2 where we poured the juice through a metal mesh strainer. You would think that white cloth would end up being dyed a lovely shade of purple, right? Wrong. It turned out, after washing, to be this sick grey color. Bummer.
The mashing mallet that we used did, however, turn a lovely shade of burgundy!

Here's a rare shot. It was hard during all this to get a shot of me with my MIL. Seems that one of us was always holding a baby while the other worked. Strange how that happens...

Here's what we ended up with.

Beautiful. It feels so good, at the end of the day, to sit back and survey one's handy work.
And then take a picture of one's labors.

And then re-arrange the shot and take another picture.

And then one more shot for good measure.

After hours of toiling in the sun to gather grapes and pluck them, slaving over a hot stove and then straining all the juice we made, the unthinkable happened. Due to a busy life as a wife and mother my grape juice turned to...dun, dun, dun...vinegar. I was heart broken!! Two gallons of grape juice wasted. To keep from crying I documented the disposal of the afformentioned vinegar with the, somewhat comforting, thought that "this will make a good blog." It also made for a great learning experience. When you let 2 gallons of grape juice turn to vinegar- you have a lot of vinegar. Okay, really I learned that I should freeze the juice, and that's exactly what I did 2 weeks later when I had to repeat the entire process over again!!

*Warning* If you suffer from a weak heart, the next picture may be the last one you ever view.