Sylvia's Scenario

 I noticed recently that our neighborhood grocery store, Metropolitan Market, had Seville oranges.  When we visited Nick in Spain, there were orange trees everywhere and the city of Seville was known especially for their orange trees.  Nick lived one hour south of Seville so we were very familiar with the oranges.  I couldn't believe it when I saw them in the grocery store here.  The thing about Seville oranges is that they are really sour and if you want to eat them, you must make orange marmalade so that's what I did.  I remember when we picked one off the tree in Seville to eat, we had to immediately spit it out because it was so sour!  That was hard because the trees are EVERYWHERE in Seville and they looked so inviting.  I thought we just got an orange that wasn't ripe because the trees near Nick's house had super sweet oranges. He had a park behind his house and we would pick the oranges and throw them over the fence into his pool. The kid...

This was our last weekend of canning for the year.   We have finished squeezing the juice out of the grapes from our small vineyard of gewürztraminer grapes so we can now make grape jelly. Since these are not concord grapes, our grape jelly is golden, not purple.  Looks like honey and just as sweet, too! As you can see, we get plenty of grapes.  We also get a lot of a variety of white seedless grapes but we eat all those, no problem.  They are so sweet, like little bundles of sugar. The  gewurztraminer grapes are also sweet and delicious to eat but the seeds are a pain so we make jelly out of them.    So first we bring them in and wash them, getting them ready to process. After they are washed and cleaned, we put them through a food mill to remove the skins and seeds. One end spits out the skins and seeds and the other end is where the juice flows out.  The by-product of all the grapes is this mash of skins ...

We have two plum trees so we've gotten really good at making plum jam. Today, we made 50 jars. Start with fresh plums right off the tree. We had a good crop this year. Each batch of jam makes 10 cups and uses 4 pounds of plums which is approximately 6 - 8 cups or 40 medium plums.  I always weigh them just to be sure.  It can vary quite a bit. Wash plums and pit them but do not peel them.  I cut them in half and put them in the food processor. Chop finely in the food processor using short pulses, do not puree.  Keep some chucks since jam ought to have little pieces of fruit in it.  Pour into a 6 or 8 quart pan and add 1/2 cup of water per batch, 1 box of powdered fruit pectin and 1/2 tsp. of butter to reduce foaming, if desired.  Stir constantly, covered for about 5 minutes until mixture reaches a full rolling boil that cannot be stirred down.  Skim off any foam off the top. Add 8 cups of sugar, return to...