Grape juice!

 

 

 

I love love love homemade grape juice. My mom got her hands on some a few years back and let me bottle some and I've been addicted ever since. I've been hording my last bottle of juice for over a year because I wasn't sure when I was going to get more. Well, this was my lucky year!

 

I was so fortunate to have access to both red and white grapes this year, so I went bat-crazy picking as much as I could and spending tons of money on new jars to store it all.  I was up to my elbows in grapes for 4 days straight just picking grapes and steaming and canning them.  It takes SO LONG to steam the grapes into juice, then can the juice, but so worth it.  I wanted to build up a nice big stock in case I'm hording them for another few years!

 

My friend Lacee grew up in a house with a vine, and her mom generously let me take as much as I want, so we took our boys over and let them play while we picked grapes.  The boys had fun smooshing grapes in their hands.

After I had some of the juice canned Bennett had fun taking all the rings off the jars.  In fact, he was having a grand old time leaning over the baskets of grapes playing in them. . .until he lost his footing and fell in!  He cried for a long time - more out of fright than hurt, because the grapes provided a nice soft cushion for his head, but he did manage to juice quite a bit of grapes in the process!  Mike had to take care of him and clean him up because I was hiding in the corner laughing.  I'm pretty sure I won the Worst Mom award for that because I couldn't stop laughing at how he had looked toppling over into the basket and then covered in juice.  Poor kid. 

 

Looooving my grape juice!  Here's hoping I get to do this again next summer!