Fruit Slinger

Last weekend, I came into some grapes. 

Unfortunately, I rarely stumble upon just a little fruit. It comes in problematic quantities — which is how I know that one full lug of grapes fits snugly on the bottom shelf of my refrigerator and, making it especially tidy, still allows the door to close.

This was a lot of grapes. And my concept of a lot of fruit is, I'm betting, quite different from your concept of a lot of fruit. And this was a lot of grapes.

You would be surprised how few looks a man with a tub full of grapes garners on the sidewalks of Chicago as both the tray and the man are groaning under the weight of the grapes on the walk home.

I was.

Once home, I approached a fellow canner with a deal: You can have half these grapes if you give me some jam jars and promise not to judge me, in ascending order of importance.

I made the trade and picked out the underripe fruit. Now I was down to 5 pounds of grapes. 

Tedium is removing the skins from 5 pounds of grapes.

The one thing that you absolutely do not want to think about when you are doing this is why you need to remove the skins first. Because the skins get whirred in the food processor with a cup of sugar and then, seconds later, tossed RIGHT INTO THE SAME PAN AS THE REST OF THE CRAP.

Which, of course, is perfectly fine. Because I'm not bitter about it.

After this, the grapes and the skins and the sugar get cooked down. Once the pulp has broken down, you pass the mixture though a food mill, a look of smug satisfaction coming to rest upon your face as you realize just how many times you have had occasion to use the food mill since you bought it, even though it seems like one of those things you would buy and then use once, and even though one of those occasions that you used the food mill was when you forced Bryan to pass two potatoes through the food mill to make mashed potatoes, which perhaps was overkill, but you don't want the food mill to be the sort of thing you buy and then don't use.

Then the mixture gets cooked down. I cooked mine only to the point of a loose set. I ended up with seven jars of jam, which I crammed into my cupboard by stacking on top of other jars of jam. 

The point of this story — there was a point? there was a story? — is that Wednesday when I took home some pears, Peter told me I was out of control. Well, I took home 10 pounds of pears on top of 35 pounds of plum tomatoes. And so that perhaps figured into his comment. But the tomatoes don't count because they're not fruit. Not culinarily, anyway. Point being, they don't count. No. Point being Peter is wrong, I think.

Or not.

Point being, I can stop anytime I want to.

But I won't want to until November.