The "Skill-a-Week Challenge"

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PatrThom

PatrThom

Knife sharpening, or any basic edge maintenance (axe, razor, chisel).
Learn the difference between hollow, straight, and convex grind, how to use whetstones and wet stones, when to steel v. strop.

The dividends this skill pays will be lifelong.

--Patrick
 
doomdragon6

doomdragon6

Staff member
Gared said:
What happened with the jelly, if you don't mind my asking?
Click to expand...
The first recipe that I used never mentioned that pectin existed, so I just made syrup basically. So after another google, I found a RELIABLE recipe that uses pectin, which is what makes jelly jelly and not juice. Once I had that it went fine. 2.5 lbs of grapes gave me 2.5 cups of juice, which produced 7 half-pint jars of jelly. Not bad.

As for my other cooking ventures, I made donuts with glaze (never made glaze before), various "healthy" foods, etc. I found out it's pretty easy to average 300 calories a meal, so I've been losing weight pretty quickly over here. (Compare to a #1 at Chik-Fil-A being 1,000 goddamn calories.)

I never wanted to be a calorie counter but it happens when you start making a game of flavor:fat ratio. Turns out you can make some seriously delicious veggie meals that pretend to satisfy your meat cravings.
 
Gared

Gared

doomdragon6 said:
The first recipe that I used never mentioned that pectin existed, so I just made syrup basically. So after another google, I found a RELIABLE recipe that uses pectin, which is what makes jelly jelly and not juice. Once I had that it went fine. 2.5 lbs of grapes gave me 2.5 cups of juice, which produced 7 half-pint jars of jelly. Not bad.

As for my other cooking ventures, I made donuts with glaze (never made glaze before), various "healthy" foods, etc. I found out it's pretty easy to average 300 calories a meal, so I've been losing weight pretty quickly over here. (Compare to a #1 at Chik-Fil-A being 1,000 goddamn calories.)

I never wanted to be a calorie counter but it happens when you start making a game of flavor:fat ratio. Turns out you can make some seriously delicious veggie meals that pretend to satisfy your meat cravings.
Click to expand...
Oh yeah, trying to make jelly without pectin (depending upon the type of jelly) is pretty much doomed to failure. There are ways for some types of jelly that you can cook them down far enough that you don't need to add boxed pectin, or you can cut in a few apples, which are naturally high in pectin, but pretty much these days you need to go buy the pectin as well. I've never done grape jelly, but my pantry runneth over with strawberry jam, apple butter, raspberry jam, apricot jam, apple sauce, salsa, and pickles of various types.
 
PatrThom

PatrThom

There's multiple types of pectin, too. One for when you add sugar, one for when you don't. Make sure you pick the right one.

--Patrick
 
Gared

Gared

PatrThom said:
There's multiple types of pectin, too. One for when you add sugar, one for when you don't. Make sure you pick the right one.

--Patrick
Click to expand...
Oh yeah... trying to use the for-sugar pectin with a sugar-free mixture will result in absolute failure. Or worse yet, the supremely annoying "almost worked the way you wanted it to but didn't quite set right" failure.
 
doomdragon6

doomdragon6

Staff member
Yep. I'd actually like to try to make my own. I found a recipe to use apples to make some, but I might save that for will I'm a little more experience with regular pectin. ;P
 
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