The Sticky Purple Blob

That was living in the kitchen has been demolished.

Where did he come from?  Oh just hours and hours of work and one spilled jelly jar.  There was the hour and half I spent picking grapes.  Then the two hours or so I spent cleaning the grapes, killing earwigs and spiders plus the hour juicing the grapes.  Throw in the half hour of preparation, measuring, stirring, washing jars, lids, filling the hot water canner.  Plus finding all the ingredients, I wasn't sure exactly where the pectin was at.  The jars were *waving hands in vague manner* somewhere in the garage.

Oh and the cooking, this was the second batch so I had already spent an hour stirring a pot of hot juice once, and was on the second batch.  That's two hours of constant stirring.

It's very precise, pre-measure juice into large pot.  Pre-measure sugar into a bowl, I use a low sugar pectin for a lower sugar jelly/jam.  I could go no sugar, but it doesn't store nearly as well as stuff with a little sugar and for my purposes, where I need it for the whole year until the next grape season, sugar is the way to go.

I have to measure pectin and mix with a little sugar, mix into cold juice and add a teaspoon of butter in the juice to prevent foaming.  Then there's the washing of the jars, rings and lids.  Setting the lids to simmer and filling the canner with water and setting the stove on high.

Then the stirring starts.  As soon as the heat starts on, the stirring must never stop.  Hot juice can scorch really easily and boy, would that be a waste.  You stir until the mixture reaches a roaring boil, that is, a boil that bubbles even while stirring.  As soon as the roaring boil happens, you dump in the sugar and stir even more, until you reach a roaring boil again and boil one minute exactly and turn off your heat. 

Then the race begins.  While your jelly to be is piping hot, you must pour carefully into your clean jars.  You have to work fast, you want everything still piping hot when you put it in the canner.  Well it was during that working fast stage, while I was frantically wiping the rims of the jars to ensure a proper seal, when my dishtowel hit a pint jar and it fell over causing a spectacular spill on my counter, down my cupboards and onto my floor with a SPLOTCH, speckling my big toe and my jeans with little drops of jelly.

I can say that the remaining jars will definitely gel as they should, since there were jelly blobs all down the cupboard.

So in five seconds, my kitchen was transformed from extreme canning order into a multi layered  sticky disaster that was quickly spread by a stream of children that came to gawk.

It's not often they see their mother screw up so spectacular, you can't blame them for making the most of it.   Usually I save my biggest goof ups for when I'm in the house alone, choosing to not confess to those little people that could spend decades reminding me of my imperfections.

"Mom, do you remember that HUGE MESS you made when you spilled the hot jelly?" 

Oh yeah, it'll happen.