Making Jelly

Eat it? The Kansas Woman held a pint jar at an angle so I could more easily see the writing on the lid. “No way!” The scribbling read “2/94,” and she looked for a tool to remove the lid without destroying it.

That isn’t our oldest jar of homecanned food. There is a jar of something marked “1974” by my mother. There is no doubt of her handwriting, and I think it is some kind of jelly.

Jelly enhances many things and completes sandwiches such as a peanut butter and . . .

Grape jelly is natural for PNBJ sandwiches Bottled grape juice makes a fine jelly as does other bottle juices.

In 1994 I was fully into turning things into jelly.

A lady at church made and gifted little jars of pepper jelly. It worked for a snack on crackers with cream cheese. I returned the favor with jelly made from her favorite wine.

A house-guest nearly survived on Coco-Cola. A giant bottle of Coke became a half-dozen jars of Coco-Cola jelly.

She said it tasted like what it was. I also made jelly with Dr. Pepper and ginger ale. The ginger ale jelly was better.

We enjoy having sassafras tea simmering during the cold months. Iced sassafras tea in the fashion of southern sweet tea is unexpected.

People who turn up their nose at sassafras tea are willing to try sassafras jelly.

I prefer making jelly from the juice of wild grapes, and they were once plentiful around here. There are plenty of vines but muscadines (bullises) and scuppernongs are gone before I get to them.

There are a couple of pints of wild cherries in the refrigerator waiting for a day of low humidity so I can turn them in to jelly.

Any time I come up short on juice, I’ll fluff it up with whatever fruit juice is on hand.

Kudzu will be blooming in a couple of weeks. The vines that ate the south do not produce a usable fruit, or none at all. Kudzu jelly is made from the blooms that come on in August.

If you are out and about in the shank of the evening and smell grapes, it might be the fragrance of kudzu blossoms.

There is a wild crab apple tree on the place, and I should go back to it in the fall. Crab apples contain so much natural pectin you can forgo commercial pectin. Be sure to have enough sugar on hand because the little apples are so sour they’ll curl your teeth.

I have had poor luck turning the breakfast drink, “Tang,” and left-over coffee into jelly.

In England if you ask for “jelly,” you’ll get “Jell-O.” If you want jelly for your toast, ask for “jam.”

I don’t know how it got that way.

joenphillips@yahoo.com