The price of organic grape jelly. My mind spins. You know that I keep a mental and actual excel spreadsheet of household grocery prices. A little over a year ago, we made a commitment to try and start adding organic to our list. Uuuugghhhh - it's too expensive, it doesn't taste as good, we'll never be able to do it - WRONG. It just takes baby steps. I started with organic milk because that was the major source of protein for our family. The next logical step - Peanut Butter and Jelly. The organic peanut butter was easy to find, but the Jelly - not so much. And don't get me started on high fructose corn syrup . . . So I finally found an organic grape jelly at Trader Joe's that met all of our requirements, but always thought - surely I can make this cheaper . . .
Then one day when I was reading a blog, I stumbled upon a recipe for grape jelly from grape juice - BRILLIANT! I would have thought I'd be stomping grapes to get our jelly made. This one was fairly easy. Here's what I used:
Organic grape juice, Stevia, Sure-Jell (pink box) for low-sugar or no sugar jellies and Ball freezer jars. Side note - I talked to a friend and researched online about canning the real way and wasn't ready to commit to that part of the process, so when I found these plastic freezer jars they were my logical, simple and also cheap way to get this project done!
I found the tutorial here . I had to search around for the Stevia conversion and settled on 2 cups of Stevia - the "sugared" version of grape jelly calls for 4 1/2 cups of sugar - WAY too much!
And the question - Is it worth it? Well Yes and No. After all my calculations of the per ounce cost of Trader Joe's organic grape jelly to mine - I saved $1.28/jar. Doesn't seem like much BUT it is saving me on gas to Trader Joe's and also the SUGAR content. Mine is sugar-free - and really was simple took about 15 minutes to make.
So question is: Will I make more sugar-free organic grape freezer jelly??? Yes, I will.
Great idea, I need to start making things organically. You are an inspiration:) BTW I have canning stuff if you ever want to go that route.
ReplyDeleteVery cool! I think savings of $1.28 per jar is great! I made freezer jam this summer with all of the strawberries we picked & we love it, though it is not sugar free! I am curious to know if the jelly still set up well with the Stevia. I know that sometimes if you don't use the right amount of sugar it will not set up. I would like to do more organic, but we tend to go in spurts. We switched to organic milk for a while, but we drink 5 gallons a week & it was getting rather spendy! Way to go!
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