Biscuits and Jelly
Every summer I would make the solo flight to Texas to visit my grandparents. Somewhere in the middle of summer (after the wildflowers died and the heat was officially unbearable) I would wake up in the early morning to the aroma of made-from-scratch-biscuits and the sound of a shotgun echoing through the country air. That combination only meant one thing: it was grape season. My grandparents lived on a large piece of country property in College Station, Texas. Along the fence line of the driveway was a series of mature grape vines that grew perfect jelly grapes, berries so dark they bridged on being black, they were juicy, abundant, and ready for picking.
Once I had finally rolled out of bed mid-morning, I would quickly scarf down Gran's amazing biscuits, get dressed, and head out to join Granddaddy at the grapevines (he was always up at 5:00am shooting the crows that liked the grapes as much as we did). Grad and I would venture out and after rounding the first bend of the driveway, see Granddaddy's beloved gray Toyota pick-up truck backed up into the heart of the vines. I would crawl up on the tailgate and armed with a bucket I would pick every grape I could reach (being a pretty short kid for my age for many of those years, that sometimes wasn't very much). Texas summers always had a point during the day where the heat reached a point of no return, and that was the signal to head in for lunch.
Usually within a couple days we (and by 'we' I mean Granddaddy starting at dawn and then reinforcements of Gran and me sometime mid-morning) had stripped the vines pretty clean. The morning following the final grape-picking expedition was the start to the grape's second life. It was time to make jelly.
Day one was spent weeding out any green or overripe grapes from the batch. We would cover the stove in large pots and would bring several pounds of grapes to a boil. The room would fill with the aroma of the grapes and I would stand and stir the pots listening to the grapes pop under the pressure of the heat and watching the solid round purple shapes slowly turn to a chunky liquid. After the grapes had boiled for their specified amount of time (I don't remember a lot of specifics mostly because as a little kid, specifics don't particularly matter) Gran and I would lay old white dish towels across large glass mixing bowls directly under a line of hooks Gran had across the kitchen under her top cabinets. Then we would quickly carry the steaming pots of grapes across the cool brick floor in a series of small hurried steps and dump the contents into the old subtle dish clothes. After returning the pots to the stove top, Gran would pull up the corners of the towel and knot it multiple times to ensure the knots would hold the weight of the grapes. The towels were then strung under the counter to sit overnight and drip. To my childhood level of patience, all I wanted to do was squeeze the bags to get the juice out sooner, but Gran always told me to leave it alone because squeezing the bags caused the jelly to have impurities. So I waited, and moved on to the second best activity of the day, eating Blue Bell ice cream.
Day two was when the real fun began. By that time the grapes had virtually stopped dripping and Gran would slowly take them down and dump out the grape seeds and pulp (as good as they smelled the day before straight off the stove, they smelled terrible now). As Gran measured out the specified amount of juice I was given the task of measuring sugar. Measurements being completed, the juice returned to the large pots joined by some fruit pectin to again come to a boil. The yummy aroma filled the room once more and in went the sugar. I then would stir the mixture until it felt like my arm was about to fall off. By that point Gran had prepared all the jars and we would scrape the impurities off the top of the mixture in the pot, fill each jar, screw on the lid, and flip it on its lid atop towels on the opposite side of the room. After five minutes, Gran and I would flip all the jars right-side up and let them sit and seal. Most of the process is a little bit of a blur, but the thing I remember most is waiting for the jars to pop. Just like jars in the grocery store, the jars we used had the center pop seal on them (if you're unsure what that is, just find a jar in your refrigerator and push down on the center of the lid and listen to it pop up and down) and after sitting on the counter awhile the top of the jar would pop up and seal. It was the last sign of success if all the jars sealed themselves.
Waiting for the jelly to completely cool, I would make labels to go on the front. They always had bunnies on them (Gran's favorite animal, it seemed fitting seeing as the house was full of them) and MGG's jelly (Maggie, Gran, and Granddaddy). Each one was labeled with the year, like a good vintage wine and drawn on fun colored sheets of copy-paper using a ball point pen, sharpie, and highlighters to make them look pretty.
Jelly making is work made fun. The final product was always sweet but changed slightly from year to year. Even now after the jelly and the house are gone, I can still taste the mouth-watering flavor of MGG jelly on Gran's perfectly amazing crumbly made-from-scratch-biscuits.
After revisiting the section on Family discourse I set out trying to conquer my assignment. I have stated before that I have the memory span of a goldfish, all of three seconds. As I was trying to remember things from my childhood, there wasn't a lot to draw from so I took Ulmer's 'office' advice and made a trip to my parent's house to look through old pictures in hopes of conjuring something up. The trip was rather futile because I soon realized there weren't any family pictures. There is no photography after I was a toddler, so all the images of the years I actually remember were never taken to document my childhood. There seems to be a huge void from the toddler years until I started taking my own pictures with/of my friends in middle school. After reading through the various assignments in section II, I settled on completing the assignment on page 86 by just telling the story because I couldn't document anything with my family pictures and it just doesn't feel right to document this using stock photography or my lame attempt at sketching. For my final site however, this story starts to really accentuate the motifs that constantly occur in my life. Cooking and baking in particular along with antique ideas and processes (jelly making, making food from scratch combined with motifs that show up in my career discourse)
For those of you that had class with me last semester, this story is all too familiar. I made a video about making apple butter...and what better way to eat apple butter then on fresh biscuits? This is where that idea originated, in my grandmother's kitchen as a child. I know Ulmer had mentioned using a Punctus memory from childhood, but I don't really have any. Everything I can remember is happy, and I have no qualms about that.
Since I did not have a chance to address the class about part I of the Mystory, let me fill in a few gaps here. I am posting all the components to my widesite on my blog so they have a digital presence. I want my site to be very consistent visually, so I am waiting until the final emblem emerges before I start trying to make a site that I eventually end up scrapping.
