The Hippest way to spend the day

Rose hips, that is.

This year, our Rosa Rugosa bushes kicked out an incredible number of these gorgeous globs of reddish-orange happiness.

Apparently, all parts of all roses are edible (except, of course, those that have been chemically treated with pesticides and such), including these funny little gifts of fruit.

What's this have to do with the way to spend a day? Well, today is my first day of summer. It's the first day that I'm off of work, the sun is blazing, the garden is booming and I have the entire day to do whatever I please.

So while I sipped on my second cup of morning coffee, I made a do-list of sorts:

And at the top, as you can see, is "make rose hip jam" and tell y'all about it. So I set out to pick the lot of them and get started.

A thorn in my plans?

Every rose has it's thorn?

A thorn by any other name still makes you bleed?

Well, lookout, anyway, when you pick these pretty suckers. I got a little carried away once or twice when I saw a particularly pretty berry and now I have perforated fingers.

I picked a bunch:

They're so pretty!

Next step: process. Rose hips are funny little beings. They have these giant sepals that create a stiff crown at one end, and the other end is where the spikes begin. Both of these have to be removed before you can proceed.

Here are the rose hips floating in rinse water after I sliced off the crowns. 

 Next step: seeds. Not just a few seeds, either. Copious amounts of furry, nasty, inedible and irritating seeds. 

Many sources direct you to cut each rose hip open and manually scrape them all out. But that would literally take you all day for 8 cups of fruit.

For example, these seeds all came out of one fruit:

So I have better way.  Stick the suckers in a blender with a bunch of water (you'll have to do this in batches), blend on low for about 10 seconds or so to chop up the fruits (without chopping the seeds too much) and go check your e-mail.

I mean, do something for a minute or so while the mixture separates out because, viola, the seeds float!

At this stage, you can spoon them off the top. A nice tip is when you're struggling to get the last few seeds, fill the blender to the top with water and scrape them off the surface with your fingers.

I filled this bowl with seeds from all the rose hips:

You can bet that those did not go in my compost pile.

After all that blending and seperating and skimming, you're left with this:

Which you then pour into a pot with the water you used to blend and boil it up for a long time.

Ah! Added bonus. I was hot and inspired, or just perspired, and desired some sweet iced tea. Instead of reaching for the mint tea bags, I took some water from my mixture here, strained off the pulp, sweetened it and poured it over ice. 

So, so good.
Guaranteed to satisfy your thirst and vitamin C requirement for a month.

At some point in all the boiling (after about an hour, I'd say), I added a bunch of sugar and some lemon juice. While that was going, I sterilized my jars

After it got to the jamming stage (a little after this picture was taken) I scooped it into the jars, screwed the lids on tight and processed them in a hot water bath for about 15 minutes.

I didn't add any pectin or gelatin so we'll find out how well it gels, but it sure is pretty!

This process takes a while, so I took advantage of the downtime and baked a loaf of bread to enjoy when the jam cools down. The recipe for this no-knead bread is in my archives.

But I caution you against trying it unless you don't mind gaining 10 pounds in a month. :)

I'll report back when we crack open the first jar!

Grape idea!

('dem are some pretty grapes.)

Steve (the farmer/neighbor with the gigantic garden) grew them and suggested I take all I want because he leaves them for the birds. I've been taking him at his word and stopping by regularily to keep our house supplied with bowls full of beautiful concord grapes.

Today when I got home from work and was contemplating whether or not to go to yoga, I stood gazing out my kitchen window absent-mindedly nibbling on a bowlful when inspiration (or laziness) struck: it was time to make grape jelly.

Twenty minutes later, I was back in my kitchen with about five pounds of grapes and high hopes. This is the process:

Step 1: Admire grapes.
Step 2: Rinse grapes.Step 3: Pick stems off grapes (but don't try to be perfect, or you'll stand at the sink all day)Step 4: Stick the grapes in a blender and blend.Step 5: Line colander with cheesecloth (or have another great idea for how to separate the skins and seeds from the juice. I'm open to suggestions.)(I then secured the rim with a rubber band to keep the cheesecloth in place.)

Step 6: Pour grape goo into colander over pot to collect the juices.Step 7: Wait a very long time for this to drain.
Step 8: Get bored and manually squeeze the goo through the cheesecloth. This feels like squishing a full bladder wrapped in a washcloth. I'm guessing here.

Steps 9-?: (These steps are similar the end stages of the peach jam -- see that blog posting for more detail if this is confusing)

Add sugar to the juice (I added about 2 cups, perhaps less) and cook over medium/low heat for a while (60-90 minutes, until reduced). Sterilize jars (about 4 half-pint jars for 5 pounds of grapes) and lids. Ladle out a cup or so of the juice into a blender and add pectin powder (I use Pomona's Universal Pectin) and then recombine with the rest of the boiled mixture. Add calcium chloride water (it comes with the pectin, and activates it so you can make lower-sugar jams and jellies). Ladle into jars, tighten lids and process in a boiling water bath for 5-10 minutes.
(I'll take a better picture in the daytime)(That's a little better.)

And it's crazy tasty. But don't take my word for it.