Originally published on Photoblog by Gethin Thomas OCTOBER. 26, 2020
[81-365] 25th. October 2020- I had trouble posting my 365 post yesterday as Photoblog was not playing. But I took the photo nonetheless and wrote up the blog ready to post it. So posting it comes a bit late but here it is. As a consequence you lucky people will get two Grape Jelly posts today as I will do another one later after the jelly is made.
This is the next phase of my Grape Jelly project. I had frozen all the grapes, filling all the little gaps in my freezer in the process. These I have called my grape gaps. This was only because I had too many things on to actually make the jelly last week, because I was entertaining for the first time in months which is also why the freezer did not have many grape gaps. I'm hoping this extra freeze stage doesn't affect the flavour in any way.
The friends who visited had isolated before they came and we are isolating since they left. Just in case. So making grape jelly is a good isolation project. Two friends we met up with four weeks ago came down with the lurgy last week so it's getting a bit close for comfort. Thankfully they are recovering well and have not been hit hard. I did read this week that the latest Track and Trace data for the UK reveals that of those who have tested positive, 86 % have reported not having any symptoms at all.
My word for the day is Lurgy- it's down as humorous British, so some of you may not have heard of it before. "an unspecified or indeterminate illness. I had caught the dreaded lurgy". It's pronounced with a hard g as in Fergie not the soft g as in clergy. A nonce word popularized by Spike Milligan and Eric Sykes, scriptwriters for a 9 November 1954 programme of The Goon Show.
So what is a nonce word? That's a new one on me. I presumed being comedians it must be nonsense, but no, it originates from “for the nonce” which originates from “for the once” from Middle English. A word invented for a one off occasion that will do until something better comes along. Lurgy was often used to describe an undefined illness so this makes sense.
So today I cooked up all my grapes crushing them with the back of a large spoon because you need to get all the juice out. They were all put in the jelly bag to drip away over night which they are still doing. You can see the juice already has a very nice grapey colour.
Tomorrow I will add the sugar, boil it up and bottle it up. I've decided to use the jam sugar I already have so the pectin to set the jelly will already be in the mix. I also need to add lemon juice.
At the moment the boiled up skins and assorted bits smell of grass so I'm not sure what it is going to taste like.
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