It’s Just Like Jelly, Baby

And that’s what we’re all having for supper tonight, it seems. Because using Certo to make jam and jelly is EASIER than getting an actual supper (unless you open a can of chili, or send out for Chinese, that’s WAY easier than making jelly).

Just put the damn stuff in “your best sherbet glass” and hand around some melba toast and no one will notice. In fact it is easier than making custard (that’s what they think – clearly they haven’t ben around my house on custard night!). And they ORDER you to cut out and make their grape jelly recipe. Now, go NOW! “Clip it out at once and make a batch.”

Certo, you are not the boss of me!

This all reminds me of a family story which I was going to put on my other blog but it will probably work better over here. My grandmother and her mother and sister were making quince jelly one summer – this was out in Queens, New York in a then-bucolic area called Ozone Park, about 1905 or so. And apparently with quinces you have to strain them and there are loads of seeds and it is just generally a huge and utter pain. But the jelly is good.

So the three women labored long and hard on the making of the quince juice and then – in retrospect, this was great folly – went off and left it. Presumably to go lie down with a cold compress or something.

Well, along comes my great grandfather – a nice, kindly soul by all accounts. He wanted to help out in the kitchen! He knew that there had been some hard work going on in there. So he figured that the most helpful thing to do would be to tip the lot down the drain for the ladies. And he did.

I can only imagine what he got in his sherbet glass for supper that night!

The title is from James Taylor’s “How Sweet It Is,” which was the first thing that jumped into my head. It’s that kind of a day.