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An Essay About Grape Juice

Note: This essay was originally written to be read during a service at my church, Genesis Church. It has been edited for relevancy to a wider audience.

I am an Eucharist Enthusiast.

We moved to our current home in 2018. We live across from a lovely park, just a few blocks from where our church meets. One day the summer after we moved in I noticed some wild black raspberries growing along the fence by the railway adjacent to the park. Not being one to say no to a free snack, I began picking a few whenever I’d walk by with the dogs. The next year, I picked enough to make some jam. I called it Trashberry Jam, because the raspberries grow amongst the trash that collects along the fence, and I’ve been making it every year since. At some point, I think maybe during season two of the novel coronavirus pandemic, I read a story about our then mayor spending a lot of time as a kid picking fruit along the very same railroad tracks. That made me curious about the other plants I’d seen there. I’d noticed various small berries, but I assumed they were all poisonous. But I took some photos of leaves, did some research (I used an app on my phone), and it turns out that some of them were wild grapes! The exact variety is Vitis riparia, or riverbank grapes. They are native to Minnesota, and grow along woodland edges and fence rows throughout the state. Once you know what they look like, you’ll see vines everywhere, even along freeway fences. Most don’t produce fruit, but some do. However, the vines along the railroad fence? Prolific. But the grapes are very small, roughly pea sized, and a large portion of their volume is taken up by the seeds. I tasted some, found them to be quite astringent, but I was undeterred and picked what I thought would be enough to make some jelly.

I spent the next several hours picking the tiny berries off the stems. After a quick rinse, I followed a process I found online to extract the juice and make jelly. It was unlike any grape jelly I’d had before, but I found it quite enjoyable, as did the rest of my family. It was more berry-like than what I’d associated with grape flavor. Being the information seeker that I am, I later learned that the dominant flavor in commercial grape jelly, and commercial grape juice as well, is the chemical compound methyl anthranilate, which is only present in Concord grapes and other varieties descended from Vitis labrusca, another grape species native to the Americas (although not Minnesota). Apparently it’s a flavor quite specific to North America as well, as no one else really grows that kind of grape. When folks in Europe make fruity purple candy, they flavor it like blackcurrant instead – a flavor not well known in the US since we mostly eradicated the plant in the early 20th century after an outbreak of white pine blister rust that threatened the timber industry. But that’s a different essay.

The next year, we were finally back to meeting in person for church again, and as I kept an eye on the grapes as they grew, I wondered if there was anything else I could make with them besides jelly. Wine was an obvious option, but I don’t drink much, and from what I read, you would want to wait to pick the grapes until after the first frost, by which time the local wildlife will have pretty much cleared it out. And then, being a Eucharist enthusiast, I wondered if maybe I could make juice with it for us to use when we celebrate the Eucharist! So that’s what I did. There wasn’t quite enough juice for a whole year, but to make up the difference I found a group on Facebook where people with excess cultivated grapes ask people to please come pick them lest drunken raccoons battle each other over the bounty contained in their gardens.

Making grape juice was pretty similar to making jelly. The main difference was the amount of sugar added. After boiling the stemmed grapes for about 10 minutes, you start filtering the juice from the seeds. This is a messy and time consuming process; you’ll want a ready supply of bleach available, unless you have a desire for purple countertops. I found that running the juice through a colander, then a mesh strainer, and finally a jelly bag was the most efficient way to do it given the materials I had on hand. Once strained, let it sit in the fridge for 24 hours or so. During this time, tartaric acid present in the juice will crystallize. If you’ve ever used cream of tartar, perhaps in snicker doodle cookies, it’s made from this stuff! Strain it one more time to remove the crystals. The resulting juice is pretty different from what you buy at the store – quite thick and prone to staining anything it touches – not unlike blood, actually!

I grew up in a conservative Lutheran church, and we used thin, cheap, watery juice just like our church did for many years. In confirmation class I learned that Lutherans believed that Christ’s presence is in and with the elements but does not become Christ’s body and blood, which is what the Roman Catholics believed. That made sense to me, because that little vial of off-brand Welch’s they gave us on the first Sunday of the month when we’d take communion (making the service longer and thereby creeping dangerously close to the kickoff of the Vikings game) didn’t look anything like actual blood. I could buy into there being a spiritual presence, even that there’s a union made between the bread and wine with the body and blood, but as a chronic Nosebleed Haver, I knew what blood looked like and Welch’s ain’t it. In reality, it turns out there’s a bit more nuance and I may have been fed some anti-Catholic propaganda, but I’ll be honest, I don’t really understand why all the denominations have spent so much effort trying to dunk on each other over what it is that happens during the Eucharist or exactly why we do it. Is He present in the elements, physically and/or spiritually? Is it just something to do to remember His death and resurrection? I suppose I have an opinion, but I don’t really know. But I do know that Jesus asked his disciples that in remembrance of Him that they eat some bread, that it was His body; and drink some wine, that it was His blood. If I were going to tell people that something was my blood, having now made juice from actual grapes, I totally get the choice.

I like that we celebrate the Eucharist every week at our church. I like that we’ve used the same invitation, adapted from the Iona community every week, and that sometimes we even say it together, inviting each other to the table. I like that we practice intinction, and I like that we are considerate of dietary restrictions. When I’m the reader, one of my favorite parts is watching the kids attempt to guess exactly how many prepackaged elements they can grab without risking a parental rebuke. And I love that I’ve been able to spend some time in the late summer the past few years picking grapes and making juice while I think about the people in my church who will come to the table and receive God’s goodness by way of some grapes that I found growing along the railroad tracks a few blocks west of where we meet.

COVID-19

Hi! I hope everyone is having a nice holiday season. I’ve had better.

How my wife found me on Christmas morning. Santa and his crew are hiding the blood spatter.

Wordle

Happy February! Like many of us, particularly Minnesotans apparently, I’ve added playing Wordle to my daily routine for the past month or so. I’ve also started photoshopping my scores into classic children’s books.

schlazathon 2021 wrap up

Thanks to everyone who contributed to schlazathon 2021! We ended up raising over $7,000 for 46 different nonprofits! I finished making the ornaments on Saturday and was able to get everything packaged up Sunday, so if you were a contributor, expect to see your priceless treasures soon. I’m already thinking about plans for next year.

supplies acquired!

schlazathon 2021

Note: schlazathon 2021 officially ended on December 13, 2021, but I do have a few wallets remaining. You’re more than welcome to contribute and I’ll do my best to send you a print, but it may not be your first choice. Thanks!

Hey there! Remember when I had my awesome photographer friend Betsy take pictures of me in my pandemic garb and then I mailed a bunch of you wallet prints and some gum? Check that link if you don’t recall. I had a blast hearing from many of you after you received your pictures, and if you were a recipient I hope it brightened your day.

It also encouraged me to look for other ways to be helpful In These Trying Times – providing a meal or care package to people having a hard time, donating to charities and GoFundMe campaigns, that sort of thing. And then Betsy was in town again a couple months ago, and folks, we did some more photographs.

walkin’ down the street to the hardcore beat while my JVC vibrates the concrete

Henry & Stella & Sebastian

I’d like to introduce you to some new inhabitants of the Schlenk home.

henry & sebastian & stella

I was perusing Sarah Bessey’s 2021 Christmas Gift Guide the other day and came across the Hand-Knit dolls from cuddle+kind. It could be said that the Schlenks are suckers for cute things, and as such I consulted with the other humans in the house and quickly liberated a car payment’s worth of economy points to bring these three home. They arrived quickly and are just as cute in person as they are on the website. We originally planned for them to be Christmas gifts but the thought of them being stuck in their big box for a month didn’t seem fair to us or them, so they’ve already joined the rest of the stuffed cute things in our home and are settling in well.

Pandemic Portraits

zubaz wearing man in a cardigan humming song named for his outerwear choice

How’s everyone holding up? Some things I have learned during the past nearly a year of living in a pandemic:

It is Time

Clearly a lot of time has past since the last post, and if I were a better blogger I would spend at least a moment acknowledging that I have not posted in a long time. But I am not a good blogger.

Instead I write because I have made something. It is not good, but it is something.

The Minnesota Twins are Good at Baseball

I enjoy watching baseball. I’d call myself a casual fan, not because I only watch when they’re good, but because I’m not one of those folks who can tell you all the reasons why they are good or what they should do to get even better. I just like watching baseball. It’s a reliable presence with an even tempo and also there’s a lot of statistics.

As the Twins have been leading their division, league and even all of baseball quite frequently this season, my cousin started tweeting whenever they had the best record in baseball. Of course that got tedious so he inquired about automating it. I thought that sounded like a fun project. And if something is worth doing, it’s worth overdoing, so I made a ruby gem that includes the leader executable that’s useful for determining whether or not your favorite team is leading their division, league or all of baseball. It can also report to you which team is leading baseball, a league, or a division as well as print out a nice leaderboard with sort and filtering options.

Some results:

$ leader is minnesota-twins -l && t update "Today is the 27th of June and the Minnesota Twins have the best record in the American League."
Today, the 27th day of June, 2019:
The Minnesota Twins are the leaders of the AL C division.
The Minnesota Twins are the leaders of the AL.
The Minnesota Twins are not the best team in baseball. They are #2.
Tweet posted by @schlazor.

Run `t delete status 1144439948352692224` to delete.

Using it isn’t quite as straightforward as installing an app on your phone, but keep reading and I’ll walk you through it if you’re interested.

Strongly Held Opinions

A few days ago I started a meaningless Facebook group called Grouper McGroupface because the future is private and/or I wanted to make polls for my friends to fill out. One such poll was about ice cream cones:

A few years ago I bought a pack of ice cream cones at the grocery store on a whim. Seemed like it would be fun to watch Iver shove his face into, probably. But I found that I really liked eating ice cream from a cone at home. There are many benefits! I will list them now:

  • No need for a clean bowl or spoon
  • No dishes to wash after consumption of the ice cream
  • It’s fun to pack the interior of the cone before putting perfect spheres stacked on top
  • The ice cream is licked
  • The cone tastes good
  • That part at the bottom of the cone where all the melted ice cream is
  • The cone is crunchy, a nice contrast to the soft ice cream

Probably the biggest difference is the licking. Normally when I eat ice cream with a spoon I put a bit in my mouth and kind of half chew it, and then down it goes. Licking makes the ice cream last longer.

Anyway, all that to say that after making the poll and seeing the results and comments, I realized I had a pretty strong opinion on the matter, despite it being just about the most unimportant aspect of my life. So be warned: this may be the first post in a series of posts detailing hills upon which I would die defending.

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