I should have made pickles today, I have loads of cucumbers. But… there was a beautiful bag of frozen red currants in the freezer that’s been calling my name. This is the first year my red currant bush fruited. It only yielded about 4 cups, not even enough to make a pie with. Still, I wanted to make something special with the berries.
I remembered making grape jelly with my Grandmother. We had an arbor in the back yard that was loaded with dark purple, thick skinned grapes. They were so delicious. Jelly day started early, picking and preparing the grapes and sterilizing our jars and lids. The kitchen steamed up and smelled all sugary, like candy. In a few hours we had rows of glistening purple jars lining the counters. That gave me the idea of making a jar of jelly.
I found a beautiful page on the Internet : David Lebovitz, living the sweet life in Paris , that gave simple and perfect instructions.
I gently cooked the currants until they were soft, then put them through a food mill. Weighing the juice on a postal scale, I came up with 6 ounces. The ratio between fruit and sugar for jelly is 1 to 1 so I knew I needed 6 ounces of organic cane sugar, which I also weighed out.
I brought the juice to a boil and skimmed off the scum that came to the top and stirred in the sugar. Everything was then brought to a boil for 5 minutes. It was at the perfect jelly stage! Everything took less than an hour.
When my daughter came home, I made us a snack. Homemade, buttered sourdough toast with red currant jelly and a cucumber smoothie, lol. I don’t want to waste these cucumbers! A combination of cucumber, frozen pineapple, frozen blueberries, a squirt of lemon juice and a spoonful of honey made a really good and refreshing drink.
It sounds delicious! The jelly that is, I’m so sure about the cucumber smoothie 😉 x
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Heh. I’m going to gingerly try adding cucumber to my next pineapple smoothie. 😉
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Yum.
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Yum; we can only buy frozen red currents here. Your recipe sounds simple and delicious.
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I put all my berries and cucumbers in smothies!
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Healthy and delicious!
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I love red currants – and that recipe for jelly looks quite straight-forward, although I haven’t the luxury of so many single-use kitchen appliances like they do in France 🙂
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Sounds like a perfect meal! When my red currants start fruiting in a couple of years, I will make jelly 🙂
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Your red currant jam and cucumber is just plain wow. Brilliant idea of adding the cucumber to the smoothie. Thanks for this wonderful post!
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Such sweet memories of Jelly Day with your grandmother, Cynthia! It’s so wonderful that you have followed the same tradition with your red current harvest. You are really enjoying your gifts from the garden this summer! ♡
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That jam looks really good! I love jam 🙂
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That jelly got to that stage in 5 minutes? Wow! I’m giving up on having “thick” jam, though my lemon-blueberry jam is so delicious, who cares if it dribbles off the English muffin! Sounds like a great smoothie, and Aggie’s comment made me think– oh yes, why not add ginger, too! LOL
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Also, to increase crispness in the pickles, we put them in water overnight with about a 1/4 tsp of alum in it. It seems to work, and keeps the cucumbers fresher for pickling, too.
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Sounds delicious!
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Cynthia,
Two weeks ago, I had currants from a bush (brought from Germany in 1952) for the first time. And, gooseberries. I loved them both and I am eager to make currant jelly, too.
Ginene
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That jam looks delicious
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Red currant jellies, (like most jellies) are so pretty to look at and I love it with cheese!! Thank you for the link, xo Johanna
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