Grape Jelly!!!

Today's topic is GRAPE JELLY! yummo!
It's super easy and just takes a little time and patience. 

Materials:
Jars with lids
Grapes
Pectin
Sugar
Pots and spoons
Old Towel
Funnel

Step One:

Pick as many grapes as you can off your vine (or you can go buy grapes).  My vine tends to ripen around August-September.  I prune my vines back in February and they fill in nicely by the time summer comes around. 

Step Two:
Put the grapes in a large cooking pot and fill with water so it barely covers the grapes.  Now cook on a med temperate until the grapes boil down and the water turns red and everything smells delicious.  (Took me about 30 min) 

Step Three:
Lay an old towel (that is clean of course) in a strainer and set the strainer over another large pot (a tall pot works best for this) and pour the grape juice into the strainer.  The towel will keep lots of the sediment from ending up in the jelly.  You will probably want to let this sit overnight so all the grape juice makes it way into the pot.  When you are done, pour the juice into a container and let it sit in your fridge until you are ready to make the jelly.  (I usually make the juice one day, and jelly a week later) 

Step Four:
Wash out your jars and keep them in hot water while we do step 5.

Step Five: 
Get your grape juice out of the fridge and pour it into a cup that measures liters (I have a pitcher that has measurements on the side).  While your grape juice was sitting more sediment ended up on the bottom, so pour it out carefully and try not to get a lot of sediment in your new container.
The recipie I follow comes from the Saturday Evening Post and it uses:
1 box of pectin (Sure-Jell brand) and 3 cups sugar per 1 liter of grape juice. 
So find out what you need based on how many liters you have.  I did a batch with 4 liters of juice.  Each liter will fill about 3 small jars, so keep that in mind. 
Now, heat up your grape juice until it comes to a boil.  Then add the pectin and stir until the juices comes to a rolling boil.  THEN add the sugar and continue stirring until the juice comes to a boil again.  The mixture will start foaming and you know when you are done when you are afraid the foam will come right out of the pot.  Turn off the heat and remove as much foam as you can.  Now one by one take out a jar - fill it with jelly almost to the top (I found that a funnel works wonders here) wipe the rim of the jar off and put the lid on tightly.  Let the jars sit undisturbed for 12 hours and after the first hour you will probably hear popping sounds of the lids popping into place. 

Step Six:

The jelly will last for a long time, but its always nice to give a few to friends and family :)