grape harvest

We had about 20 lbs of concord grapes from Auntie K's tree. In the past I've made grape jelly from the juice but we're not really jam people so I googled recipes and decided to make grape juice concentrate.

First we stripped the grapes from the stems and washed them.

Then boiled the grapes and mashed them into pulp and juice. Then into cheesecloth to drip overnight.

D rigged this up (cheesecloth draped over a broom handle) slung between two drawers as he didn't think our faucet was up to holding the weight of the cheesecloth overnight.

After dripping overnight, I added sugar and water to the juice, boiled and poured into hot jars and sealed. I ended up with 10 1/2 jars of concentrate. I cut the concentrate with about 5 parts water for juice. It is sweet (the sugar will preserve the juice) and grapey.

Sunday I took T for a haircut. He sat quietly in the spiderman car and watched Diego look for dinosaurs - good as gold. He got to take a toy garbage truck home from the toy bag. And he played in the ballroom afterwards for a few minutes.

Here is T sleeping on his Thomas the Tank Engine sheets and duvet cover. Our sweet boy!

I harvested all the green tomatoes in the garden - ended up with this big bowl. Yum - tomato pie anyone?