Re: Onions and grapes

pressing need - i like it!

On 8/20/07, Johnson Cyndi D Civ 95 CG/SCSRT <cyndi.johnson@edwards.af.mil>
wrote:
>
> Hmmm, sounds worthwhile, I'll try drying some onions. But I'll put the
> dehydrator in the garage I think.
> Yes the grape juice is incredibly sweet, more like syrup actually. My
> tomato processor is a "Victorio" but it's the same machine pretty much.
> However the grape stems were too big and tough to go through the smaller
> spiral that the tomatoes use, so it jammed up almost instantly. Once we
> separated out the stems it worked okay. But still, too much work for not
> enough return, I won't try it again unless I have some better method or
> a pressing need (pun intended :-) for the product.
>
> Cyndi
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-gardenchat@hort.net [o*@hort.net] On
> Behalf Of james singer
> Sent: Monday, August 20, 2007 11:33 AM
> To: gardenchat@hort.net
> Subject: Re: [CHAT] Onions and grapes
>
> Onions. I'd dry a bunch of them. Then turn the dried ones into flakes
> and powder.
>
> Wine grapes. I grew a few gwertztreminer [sp?] at the farm. I processed
> them with a "Squeezo," which separated juice from all that other
> stuff--skins, seeds, stems. The juice was cloudy, not clear. I canned it
> in 1/2 pints--breakfast glass serving size jars. The juice did not
> settle; it remained cloudy. It tasted great. I did not have a brix meter
> at the time, but the sugar content was high-high--the juice was quite
> sweet and tasty.
>
>
> On Aug 20, 2007, at 2:04 PM, Johnson Cyndi D Civ 95 CG/SCSRT wrote:
>
> > I harvested the rest of the onions, these are "Candy", a nice yellow
> > onion. They did extremely well this year and I'll definitely plant
> > them again. I only had a few of them show signs of stress (they start
> > forming double bulbs inside the outer layer) and their average size is
>
> > a whopping five inches across. I had a couple monsters at 8 inches
> > across!
> > So the spare fridge is full of onions and there's another 20 pounds of
>
> > so just sitting in the garage waiting for inspiration to strike me -
> > they can't stay there long, it's too hot in there. You should be happy
>
> > that you associate with me only via email, because we'll be eating a
> > lot of onions now.
> > So we have these grapevines. They are wine grapes we planted many
> > years ago, mostly for fun, thinking one day we might get ambitious and
>
> > try making our own wine, which we haven't. Years ago I picked a bunch
> > of them and make grape jelly, and about all I remember of it is
> > learning that if you don't let the grape juice sit for a couple days
> > you get tartaric acid crystals in your jelly. We hack back the vines
> > when they get rambunctious and let the birds eat the grapes, they are
> > very small grapes and have lots of seeds so they're not good for just
> eating.
> > Anyway this year they had a nice crop and I've been looking at them,
> > thinking as I do every year I ought to do something with them. Late
> > Sunday afternoon husband and I got a wild hair and we picked about 20
> > pounds or so and dragged out the tomato squeezer, figuring we'll
> > squeeze them up and have grape juice. We found out right away that
> > there's a reason they have different "screens" for squishing tomatoes
> > vs. grapes, so plan B was removing the grapes off the stems and then
> > sending them through the squeezer, very tedious.  Well. The resulting,
>
> > ummm, stuff was pretty sludgy and just this awful color of green/brown
>
> > (the color in wine comes from the grape skins, not the juice). So I
> > dumped a bunch of the skins back in it and let it sit. This morning we
>
> > now have more of a brown/green color, only marginally better, and I
> > managed to strain out some of the sludge. It's fairly tasty though. I
> > expect eventually I'll get something drinkable but obviously we need
> > different equipment if we're going to ever do this again. Probably be
> > another 10 years before we forget this experiment! Not everything I do
>
> > turns out well.
> > Husband and I did work in the dry garden too. I showed him the
> > oenothera (dune primrose) that could be pulled out, and told him not
> > to touch anything except that and grass. Instantly he says "how about
> > this?", pointing at freeze-damaged (but not dead) salvia. No, I said,
> > don't touch anything except those two things. "But how about this?"
> > pointing at the opuntia and so forth and so on. I had to threaten him
> > with great bodily harm but he did finally give in. So it doesn't look
> > much different - it looks like a desert garden at the end of summer,
> > which is to say, not too great - but I think he feels better. Oh yes
> > and my opuntia, which was greatly damaged in the Big Freeze, still
> > does look poorly - but it is putting forth new pads at the edges of
> > many of the damaged ones, and there were even some blooms. I dumped a
> > couple gallons of water on it and I have hopes that eventually it will
>
> > be looking good again.
> >
> > Cyndi
> >
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> >
> Island Jim
> Southwest Florida
> 27.1 N, 82.4 W
> Hardiness Zone 10
> Heat Zone 10
> Sunset Zone 25
> Minimum 30 F [-1 C]
> Maximum 100 F [38 C]
>
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-- 
Pam Evans
Kemp TX
zone 8A

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