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This is the revamped version of last weeks grape jelly abomination. Today, I pried off all the lids and scraped the rubbery grape juice into a big pot. In the process I managed to fling the rubbery grape juice all over my new subflooring. I hope the new flooring will stick extra-well in that spot, just so that all my effort won't be wasted.

Some of the jelly landed between my big and second toes. I've washed them repeatedly, but they're still sticky. Brings all new meaning to the words "toe jam", doesn't it?

I put the jelly on the stove and brought it to a boil. Just like last week, it went from lukewarm to "Hey! Look at me! I'm rubbery grape juice and I'm a lava flow overtaking your entire kitchen!"

For two hours, I cooked this shit at a simmer, watching it like a hoodlum child who might dare to chase his errant frisbee onto my yard, thus forcing me to go all housemarm on his ass. That's the next step in my farmwife/housemarm conversion: screaming at neighborhood children to keep off my lawn and confiscating their toys.

I added more pectin. To the jelly, not the neighborhood children. They don't require pectin to make them gelatinously delicious. I added sugar. I stirred. I hovered. I wrung my hands. I sweated a lot.

And still the goddamn mess refused to gel!

At this point I've lost count of how many hours of my life I've wasted on these three and a half pounds of grapes. I removed them from the heat and came upon the next problem destined to suck up more precious hours of my life: it's too liquid to put in the trashcan, and yet too rubbery to pour down the drain. Attempts to pour it down the drain would most likely lead to the rubbery juice bouncing off the sink, hitting the ceiling, where it would then land on my head, creating an air-tight seal and suffocating me, just for wrath. Heh. Get it? Grape Jelly of Wrath.

Anyway, I let it sit on the stove for an hour while I pouted. When I returned to the stove, lo and behold, it gelled! Somewhat. Well, at least it wasn't completely liquid anymore. And even though it tastes scorched and is as black as my soul, you know what I did?

Well, of course you know what I did. You saw the photos. I put that sticky, charred black shit into jars.

Now, the next delimma: I have intensions of using the products of my recent canning frenzy as holiday gifts. My first instinct is to give the horrible burnt grape jelly to people I dislike. But I can't really do that. If I dislike someone, I have the overwhelming desire to make them think that I am far superior and can do no wrong. Give bad jelly to someone I dislike, just so they can say, "Yeah, that Robin, thinks she's such a fucking big shot in the kitchen. Taste this garbage. It tastes like the stuff I used to patch my roof last summer!" No. I won't be doing that.

I can give it to people who love me. They'll understand why people I hate are eating the good stuff while my loved ones are eating crap.

Regardless of who gets the Grape Jelly of Wrath, I'm changing the name. Since it's scorched and tastes as such, I'm going to call it "Caramelized Grape Jelly". You see, if I learned anything when I was in culinary school, I learned that marketing is everything. Burnt is bad. Caramelized is fancy. Therefore, you'll eat it and you'll love it, even though it tastes faintly of motor oil.

All joking aside, while I worked on my jam and jelly today, I spent a lot of time thinking about things that happened a year ago. How different everthing is now than it was a year ago. And yet, a year ago yesterday, I bought my first two skeins of sock yarn. And I'm still trying to knit a damn sock out of it. What does this mean? I have no idea. Maybe it means the reason I can't knit socks is because sock-knitting will always be connected to a time of fear, tragedy and loss. Or maybe it means that even when it feels like the whole world's going down the crapper, it's the fundamental things that pull us out of it. Or that hope springs eternal and life goes on. It's a different life, but it goes on and it's still good. Just in a different, more bittersweet and better-appreciate manner.

And speaking of good, my friend Janna's doing some good. Let me tell you about Janna. She evacuated from New Orleans before Katrina with her 2-year-old son and a daughter who was less than a week old. They were fine, and their house was fine, but they spent several months away from home. They spent a lot of time seperated from her husband, who's a college football coach. He had his hands full with a team full of freshman who were either dealing with their own familial loses on the Gulf Coast, or kids who'd just moved to New Orleans for school, only to be faced with this.

Janna and her family have been through it. So, when Janna says she's going to help those in her city who went through it, you'd better join in. On Tuesday, her company, Muffin Tuckers, will be donating 100% of the profits from any New Orleans-related items to Tipitina's Foundation. Tipitina's Foundation is working to help New Orleans musicians and school music programs recover from the devastation. I think Clara Jane needs this shirt, being a Mardi Gras baby and all. So, go help. Get something cute. Tell 'em Poppy sent you, and I promise you won't get a jar of Grape Jelly of Wrath come Christmas.