Red seedless grapes, $0.79 per lb., my wife said, a few days ago. Hmmm., pretty reasonable. Should we? Well. They looked pretty good at our supermarket, and no limit for a change, so we lugged home 20 lbs! That was how yesterday afternoon was spent, no SFO posts made. Picked them off stems until I hurt from bending over the sink. Boy, were they sweet! How can one resist eating a couple...... Ground 'em up in the blender, divided the mash in half, two 5-gallon buckets used, 4 gallons each, gotta allow for foaming up of the shlupki (skins) to avoid running over. This evening I added the yeast. 8 gallons of wine for under $20, not too bad. Suger's getting expensive. The yeast? Two bucks, total.
Here's a few batches from about a year ago: The orange-colored ones I can't remember what type fruit, but the yellow was pineapple, the nice dark-colored one Blueberry, white plastic bucket with lid on it is beer, the blue buckets are illustrative of the food-grade buckets I use. I have since gone to only white. Frank
@Texas Beth Thank you for your post! Stuff like I make cannot be bought, generally, as all my work uses only four natural ingredients: water, fruit, sugar, and yeast. I have tried many unusual fruits, with varying results. Among the best: Red Raspberry, Blueberry, Pomegranate, Blackberry. Less attractive: Mango (difficult to clarify), Date, kinda "pithy". A pitfall to making delicious wine is the tendency to drink too much of it! Frank
Wow, that 20 pounds of grapes would last for a week here. I remember when my husband came back from a 4-month stint in London, his hand-carry bag was full of seedless grapes. In 1986, there was no seedless grapes here and we didn't even think that it existed. Anyway, we had a grand time with the homecoming of my husband particularly with the variety of grapes - elongated green, round red like that in the photo, and the strange black grapes. Fortunately, seedless grapes are now common in supermarkets here and also affordable. I sometimes buy grapes by the kilo that would last us for days. It's nice for a healthy snack while watching tv.
@Corie Henson Remember that the darker the grape, the higher in Phytochemicals, the anti-oxidants thought to aid us in warding off cancer. Main one in dark grapes is Resveratrol. Frank
We have grapes on sale too, but they go for 1.98 a pound. Right nowTime's Supermarket has red grapes for 1.69 a pound and to us this is so cheap. Compared to your .79 a pound we pay a dollar more about for grapes. 1.99 green grapes at Foodland and 1.98 a pound for black and green grapes at Don Quiote supermarket. Oh well that's life for we got to pay extra for shipping I suppose. I love sweet grapes. I bought black grapes at Don Quiote and they aren't that sweet now.
Food prices are outrageous in Maui. Everything has to be shipped in so it's understandable but do the people make more money there? What's the minimum wage in Hawaii? @Krissttina Isobe
It depends where you apply...saw a banner for McDonalds in neighborhood start pay was 8.97. Don't know what benefits they got for employees. Most employees do not advertise what they pay employees, sorry. Here is the average pay for people in Hawaii site: http://www.payscale.com/research/US/State=Hawaii/Salary.