Someone gave me 5+ pounds of surplus grapes, which yielded 7 cups of juice. The juice itself was good enough to drink unsweetened but I used it to make jelly and gummies inspired by Ana Rocha. Her recipe uses apple and pear juice with agar powder. Because I thought apple juice would have more natural pectin, I added pectin in addition to agar, but it was not necessary. Agar is a very good substitute for gelatin. It was surprisingly hard to find at my Natural Grocers and other stores in the area though. Employees didn’t even know what it was.
There was a little grape juice left, which I combined with blueberry green tea steeped in pomegranate juice and made blocks of similar gummies to consume during endurance sports. We all ran a 5K open race before a cross-country meet, and this being only my son’s second run at that distance, I thought he might need replenishment. I do sometimes. I’m still tweaking this recipe, but if you want to try it, here’s what I did that day:
- Boiled 1 1/2 cups juice briefly, then turned off and steeped 4 blueberry green tea bags in it for about 5 minutes (adds a little caffeine)
- Stirred in a tablespoon of powdered electrolytes until it dissolved; the brand was Ultima Replenisher because that’s what we had
- Removed the tea bags and boiled the juice with 1 tablespoon agar and 1 teaspoon pectin (you could probably not use pectin and it wouldn’t matter) and about 1/4 cup of agave syrup until it thickened
- Poured into a silicone candy mold of 24 blocks, 1 square inch each
I assume this means 6 blocks have the caffeine of one cup of green tea, and my 9 year old had only one block. I ate a single block myself on a morning run when I was feeling weak, and it really picked me up. If it’s a placebo effect that’s OK. My 5K time that day was 3 minutes faster than my goal, but I don’t think that little block of sugar, salt and caffeine knocked 3 minutes off itself. If so, gummies will be banned substances.
That was the best use I’ve ever had for surplus fruit. Let this be a lesson not to throw away any fruit just because it’s more than you can consume fresh. If you don’t want to process it, find a neighbor who will and they’ll probably give you a cut. Next episode, I’ll tell you what we did with 40-some pounds of Gala apples and Bartlett pears from the trees in my front yard. I planted them 10-12 years ago but this is the first time the apple tree produced a lot of fruit.
And here’s another picture of my friend Mantis, because he’s so cool. I hope he’s still out there, alive.
Deathplow 