Starting a new recipe series based on Lucile Bluford column “No Apron Strings Attached,” written for the Cooperative Publishers Association and printed in the New Journal and Guide (Norfolk, Virginia) on September 16, 1933. Measurements follow the original; wording has been lightly regularized for readability. Bluford was twenty-two, a year out of the University of Kansas journalism school and newly hired at the Kansas City Call. A reader named Mrs. B. L., made fine grape juice but could not get it bottled. Bluford shares a method that works. That exchange drives the column. Newspapers moved practical knowledge into communities that extension services and land-grant colleges served thinly or not at all.3 Arjun Appadurai calls power over what a household grows, preserves, and eats gastro-politics. A column teaching a reader to put up six weeks of juice hands a little of that power back.
Bottled Grape Juice
Ingredients
Ripe grapes, washed and stemmed
1 cup sugar per jar
Cold, unboiled water
Sterilized quart jars, with rubbers and lids
Directions
Sterilize quart jars. Fill each one halfway with grapes that have been washed and stemmed. Add a cup of sugar and fill the jar with cold, unboiled water. Adjust the rubbers and lids but do not seal them. Set the jars in a cooker almost filled with cold water. Heat slowly until the water boils. Remove the jars from the cooker and seal at once. The juice will be ready in about six weeks.
New Journal and Guide, September 16, 1933.
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