Regarding Jelly/Jam. My granny used to make jelly from wild grapes and blackberries. She gave me 15 jars when I moved away. Shortly after, grandpa died and she sold the farm and no longer had access to the berry bushes/grape vines.
So I knew that was all there would ever be. I opened a jar each Christmas for 15 years. All were good to the last spoonful.
She never used pectin. She put the jars in boiling water and let them drain dry. She poured the hot jelly into the jars and then sealed with paraffin. Then put on the lid. She got the thickness by using a few less than ripe berries and sugar and low simmer to reduce the liquid/enhance the flavor.
Unripe fruit has more pectin in it than ripe fruit.
That’s good to know and that explains why she added some unripe fruit to the mix.
She probably just knew from experience that adding a little unripe fruit made a thicker jam without knowing why.
Good old grannies!
I bet that was the best Christmas jelly, ever.
Sweet memory.
Spent my entire life from childhood till when I moved out of my parents house making home made jam. We grew our own grapes. We had cases upon cases of them stacked along with grape juice, peach nectar, and canned any sort of Vegi you can imagine. My dad grew up on a farm and we stayed busy. My mom was a city girl. But she learned how to do it all. Weekend mornings were prepping the food and all afternoon into evening the canning was non stop. We didn’t buy a single fruit or vegetable till my dad stopped gardening in his 80’s. This was not really a garden. But more like a small farm lol.
I remember this from Fire Island, where the old-timers would make beach plum jam and blueberry jam, both from fruit that grew wild on the island.
We had a blueberry bush on our property, but there were many many in the areas that were still totally wild. You just had to watch out for the poison ivy, and later the deer ticks. The beach plum bushes were on the dunes.