I’m not a big fan of Thompson seedless grapes. Too sweet, cloyingly so. Yet I bought a bag of them the other day. What was I thinking? A big bag, and they were on the verge this morning of turning into a refrigerator antibiotics experiment. I had to come up with a quick use for them, one that didn’t involve eating them. (Did I say that?!)
I picked them off the stems. With my immersion blender, I created a…mess that I strained for juice. I can drink the juice, I thought. Orange juice is sweet. Apple juice is sweet. I get those down. Grape juice from my Thompson seedless grapes? Urp! Thank goodness there wasn’t too much of it. Most of the mess left after the blending was skin and pulp, the kind of thing vintners turn into lovely brandies or animal feed. I like the brandies,
From the little red chair by the back door, Andy’s spidey sense picked up on something happening in the kitchen….
I couldn’t bring myself to toss the pulp, though, which amounted to maybe two-thirds the volume of the whole. I decided to experiment using it instead of applesauce in pancakes, one way I like to use applesauce. It looked like it might work!
I tossed walnuts in, too. Maybe that’d help. Can’t hurt, I told myself, can’t hurt.
I was hopeful. Four pancakes isn’t a lot, if the pancakes are any good. Four bad pancakes? Um, I think it’s illegal to feed failed breakfast experiments to the ducks at the park. If not, it should be.
Something appeared in the corner of my eye: I was being watched!
Looking positive! They even smelled edible, with a hint of grape wafting off the pancakes on the griddle.
Not my best effort, perhaps, but they smelled and looked edible enough!
“Is it time yet, brother? Is it time?” Dougy took his lead from Andy.
Something else appeared in my peripheral vision.
Andy wasn’t sure, but today might, just might be the day the human shared his food! Andy wanted to be there.
(Yes, that’s Andy on the shopping tote at the top.) Andy gives the signal to Dougy: “Beg, brother! Beg like 5000 stray, starving kitties! Today is the day the human shares his food. I just know it!”
Oh my gosh! This is heavy, gaggy sweet, too much. Andy was on the table long enough to check it out, but even he would not bother with it! I wrapped the remainder in plastic, put it in the refrigerator, and, maybe, will have it for breakfast tomorrow. Now, thanks to strong black coffee, I can get that taste out of my mouth! Poor Dougy! Is his gagging in response to a hairball or are these pancakes really as bad as I think?
Even catsup can’t improve this mess!
I may have started another refrigerator antibiotics experiment.
That’s a very interesting experiment with this grape pancakes. This is something different, I will make it too. Here we have plum season. I bake daily plum cake, because we have a plum tree in our garden. It’s a small tree, but has more than 10 kilo plums. My husband will be glad if there will be something different to eat. Grapes!! :)))
Plums sound like a better fruit to use for the pancakes. I think I’d chop them in smallish pieces instead of using an immersion blender on them like I did the grapes. That way, there’d be some recognizable plum in the pancakes. Ten kilos of plums would be a lot to use! I hope you find a lot of fun ways to use them! (Plum ice cream sounds good to me…!)
I think the pancakes looked good, but I can’t see the boys liking them. Then again we’re talking about you, Andy & Dougie here – aren’t we… O_o
As far as the boys are concerned, anything I prepare probably is something they want to eat, too. We have a little ritual where I let them smell the coffee or whatever, they shake their little fuzzy heads in dismay, and I tell them, “See! I told you kitties don’t want [fill in the blank]!”
Doesn’t matter. Next time, there they are, waiting for a piece of watermelon they don’t want or a piece of cheese that they probably would eat, though I just don’t give them human food.
If I fail in some ways — furniture scratching happens right in front of me, remember! — I am very good about not letting the boys have food that’s not for cats.
Actually, Weggieboy . . . the grape pancakes with the walnuts look pretty good to me. What kind of syrup did you put on the top if any?
Your cat is so cute but tell me – – do his eyes really glow that intensely?
I do like the idea of the picture of your kitty on the tote bag.
In fact, you might be able to sell tote bags with people’s pets’ pictures on them and make some extra cash.
It was more texture than taste that was off-putting: I need to work of texture. I used plain old pancake syrup, what I had on hand. I’d considered making a syrup from the grape juice, but decided I didn’t want two experiments today! As sweet as the grape juice was, I had a feeling it would be excessive concentrated down even more through boiling. I cringe thinking about it!
The kitty on tote business is one people with pets can do easily enough without a middle guy. I have mugs, totes, calendars, postage, and cards I’ve had made through zazzle.com with favorite photos of all my cats over the years. The nice thing there is a person can personalize it several ways and offer the design for sale through zazzle.com.
They take care of everything but the designing, and you don’t have to deal with inventory, shipping, or other business like returns if the item’s not exactly what the customer expected – they pay you your profits periodically, depending on volume and other factors or you can apply it to orders of your own.
I didn’t mean for this to turn into an advertisement for that particular company. I have had excellent results with them, but I know there are others that provide a similar service. I’ve made a little money through things I made, though I think a person needs to be more committed doing business than I to retire on it!
Oh, John, about the eyes…! They are demon cats, so of course they do! LOL! I find the effect hilarious, as you can tell by my caption making the assertion that somehow the effect of flash on cats’ eyes is a “spidey sense” activated to let them know something is afoot in the kitchen, say. 😉
Hey what’s life without trying new things even if they may have been better left a refrigerator experiment tossed. 😛
I bought some grapes in town instead of at the farmers mart out here on the road home where I usually get them, and they were old and tasteless.
Lesson well learned.
Tossed them and chalked it up to experience.
They were so tasteless even old lady guinea pig would not eat them and she seldom turns down any bite of fruit.
Where I used to live, I had a lovely stand of grapes (four varieties). About this time of year, maybe a week earlier, I liked to go out in the predawn and pick night-chilled grapes that were just barely ripe, with a lovely tartness that made them tasty and refreshing, too. I miss those grapes, and rarely buy them now because nothing matches the ones I grew myself. (That’s pretty bad when Mistress Guinea Pig refuses the fruit,too! Had to laugh, but I understand her reaction!) The later grapes were sweeter but less refreshing. One of the four varieties was meant for juice or jellies and jams, so it also had a nasty tough skin after it ripened fully. Another thing that was fun was finding vine-dried grapes and realizing they actually were raisins! Those were delicious raisins! I tried to let a few bunches vine dry that way, but birds and I fought for the best of the best fruit, even though I had netting over the arbor.