Published on Saturday, August 23, 2025

By Victoria Torley

Do you have time on your hands? Nothing to do? Too hot/cold/rainy to do it anyway?

There are things that our mothers or maybe our grandmothers did before the era of processed foods that are worth a try.

For example, my mother made her own jams and jellies. Not easy, but she got it done.

I know many who still make their own spaghetti sauce (they haven’t given me a good recipe), even if some start with canned tomatoes (oh, the embarrassment!)

Still, sometimes I feel atavistic and decide to give something a try, not just bread and cakes. Those are always homemade, but something really atavistic. Enter our discovery of grape vines on the property. Vines are just loaded down with what look like small purple pearls. Suddenly, I was back in my mother’s basement workroom with the old stove and the shelves of preserves. I was hooked.

Picking grapes is easy, for the most part. Pull the vine from the tree, watch out for bees and spiders, snip off the grapes, and carry them home. Then the work starts.

First, you have to separate the “little pearls” from the stems and sort them. Green ones, old ones, damaged grapes go to the compost heap. The rest get mashed up somehow. The internet says to use a potato masher, but I haven’t seen one of those in years. Then it is weighed (1 pound = 1 cup of juice), and popped into a pot where they simmer for about 10 minutes with occasional stirring and re-mashing.

Cheesecloth! Oh, drats, just where am I supposed to buy cheesecloth? Our mothers and grandmothers always seemed to have cheesecloth, but somehow I forgot to put that on the shopping list. Think, think…pantyhose! Strain your grape mash through pantyhose! Phew, that was a close one.

Now I remember my mother having a bag made of cheesecloth. She put the grape mash into it, hung the bag from a beam, and had a way to twist it, squeezing out as much of the juice as she could get. I have no clue how to replicate that, so maybe I will just twist the pantyhose a bit? That puts a new spin on “don’t get your panties in a twist,” doesn’t it? Twist, squeeze, twist some more, and you get a lot of purple juice. Really, really tart purple juice.

My mother must have used different grapes, probably the big, juicy Concord grapes that her aunt grew. Aunt Helen would always trade grapes for jams.

Anyway, it can be interesting to do something the way your relatives did it in the olden days, and it makes you appreciate how easy and convenient things are today.

My experiment? Well, the grapes were really sour. I am going to freeze the juice and use a little bit of it when I make smoothies. It should be just right.

Plat of the week. Impatiens hawkeri, commonly called in Costa Rica as "China" and in the U.S., is called New Guinea impatiens, and is a very popular bedding plant here.

It is a broadly defined species that is native to New Guinea, the Solomon Islands, and New Ireland.

They are commonly grown in part shade to shade areas, with little tolerance for full sun.

Plants typically grow to 6-18" tall. Flattened 5-petaled flowers come in a variety of colors, including white, pink, orange, red, violet, and purple. Flowering is non-stop in Costa Rica, and from May to October up in the north.

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Find more interesting stories about gardening in Costa Rica on the AM Costa Rica Garden page. Questions on this article, Ms. Victoria Torley, gardener columnist, can be reached by emailing victoriatorley1@gmail.com
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