Grape Jelly!!!

So, this happened: I made grape jelly.  YAY!!!! Here's the process with pictures.  

 My friend, Vicky, gave me 6 pounds of grapes! I was so excited because I have always wanted to try making jelly/jam, but Phil and I only grow veggies and herbs.  Boooo.  Anyway, I tried crushing them by hand with a potato masher.  That was too hard. Then I remembered.....

 I own a food mill! So, I got to cranking.  I had to do this in small batches....

 Every pound of grapes gave me about a cup of juice.

 And I kept cranking, cranking, cranking until I had nothing left but a bunch of skins and.....

....a bunch of juice!I needed 5 cups of juice for the recipe I was using, so I saved the extra cup in a mason jar and Phil and I drank it with dinner.  It was so yummy, pulpy and deliciously fresh!

 But, because it was pulpy, I decided to strain it to make it more of a pure liquid. I did this a little at a time, too.  It seemed to take forever! So, the next step was to turn this wonderful juice into spreadable jelly. I went all over town and couldn't find pectin!!! UGH! So, I ordered it online and waited for it to come in the mail (2 day shipping) and froze the juice to preserve it until I could carry on.

Meanwhile, I went out to the garden and found this poor cucumber.  Poor, poor cucumber, never to be eaten or sliced.  How sad!

So, I ordered some pectin, which is a gelling agent, from Amazon and got it in the mail pretty quickly.  So, the next step was to heat the juice and add the pectin and sugar.  I got the No Sugar/Low Sugar variety of Ball Pectin, so I didn't have to use a lot of sugar to get a yummy, sweet taste.  First, I measured out 5 tbsp of pectin and mixed this together with 1/4 cup of sugar. Mixing these two together is supposed to help prevent the pectin from clumping.  I added the sugar-pectin mix and brought the juice to a full boil.

Once the juice/pectin mix was boiling, I added the rest of the sugar and let it boil hard for another minute.  

 Oh, I also sanitized the jars and rings during the process.  And, I put the rings in a hot water bath to soften them up so they will seal properly.

 I filled them and hand-tightened the lids into place....

 ....and processed them in boiling water for 15 minutes.

Finally, I removed them from the water and set them out to cool.  I didn't go far because I love to hear the "pop!" of the lids sealing.  Sure enough, within an hour, all of them had sealed and were ready to store.  I opened one the next morning for a taste (if you don't wait long enough for them to cool, you will just have a runny,watery mess) and it was delicious. I will definitely be making jelly again soon.  Peaches, maybe?  :)