I do not get excited about seedless grapes. I buy them rarely unless I see a good deal and want to dehydrate them for raisins. I don’t dislike them. I won’t refuse to eat them. But I am likely to bypass them at the farmers market and farm stands.
A farmer has been bringing grapes from Quilcene to our farmers market, first green, then green and red varieties. I have eyed them each week but have not bought any because I have had had the last peaches of the season at my house and late raspberries or blackberries and apples from someone’s tree. I ate the last peach of 2026 this morning with polenta and raspberries and when I walked through the Quilcene farmer’s table I saw darker grapes, grapes with purple skins. The sign said they had seeds.
I got excited. I called over to the farmer, “Are these a Concord-type grape?”
“Yes,” he said. “They have seeds. The others are sweeter.”
Hallelujah.
Where I come from in California in the Bay Area we rarely see Concord grapes, but they were my childhood introduction to grape flavor because my mother bought Welch’s grape juice and Welch’s grape jelly, both of which are made from Concord grapes.
I never forgot that childhood taste. One day I was visiting my friend Carol in St. Helen’s, Oregon. She had ripe Concord grapes on the vine. I ate some. Later she sent me a jar of jelly made from them and once, on an autumn road trip to New Mexico she brought me a baggie of fresh grapes. Now I associate Concord grapes with Carol.
I filed away the information that Concord grapes grew in St. Helen’s Oregon before I settled in western Washington on the Olympic Peninsula. I haven’t heard of anyone growing Concord grapes here. I had to look up where Quilcene is: it’s a small town in the next county east of here. Now I know that Concord grapes grow in Quilcene, on the same peninsula that I live on, in Washington.
After I put my produce away, fed the cat a small meal and tackled some overdue dishes, I made myself a lone taco with the last of my chorizo, some garden tomatoes, pickled carrots and shredded lettuce. This is a light meal for me, so I rinsed several small clusters of grapes and put them in a small bowl.
Then I perfected the art of eating the grape flesh and chewing the flavorful skins while pushing the grape seeds to one side of my mouth with my tongue. If you concentrate, you can eat seeded grapes without any nasty crunches. I spit the seeds into my hand and then into the bowl once I had eaten every grape.
While I chewed grapes, I looked up such things as “Can you grow Concord grapes in western Washington?” and “Can you grow grapes from seeds?” Yes, you can, but grapes, like apples, do not breed true, so if you plant a grape vine from seed you’ll have to wait three to seven years to find out what kind of grapes you’ll get.
Today is “Clean out the fridge day.” See what is in there, cook things that have to be cooked, use what is still useful. After breakfast (the waffle batter is still good) I peeled and trimmed a bag of windfall apples that have been sitting in there for a few weeks. Because I have leftover pie crust from my first stint of baking with home-milled flour, and because the apples are somewhat watery and soft, I’m thinking of making a tart tatin, the classic apple version, although the linked post uses pears. Caramelizing the apples in butter and sugar will cook some of the water out of them.
I made the tart tatin, but before I made that I ended up making a corn, potato and poblano chowder with roasted tomatilllos. I had roasted tomatillos and poblano and pasilla peppers because I was planning on making a green chile sauce for enchiladas. Long story short, I never made it and the pan of roasted peppers and tomatillos was still in the refrigerator. I had four ears of corn to use and four small potatoes, red bell pepper, a lone onion and garden tomatoes.
I diced the vegetables and started roasting them in olive oil on the stove, potatoes first, then onions, then bell pepper., adding a little water whenever things showed a tendency to stick.I chopped and scraped the roasted chiles into the soup pot. I added the corn and then heated water to deglaze the chile-roasting pan.
I added a can of evaporated milk, stirred the pot, let things cook awhile, and then added another full can of milk. I considered adding some smoked cheddar cheese, but held off to try a plain bowl for lunch.
What surprised me was how sweet the soup was. I can taste the heat and fruitiness of the chiles. I thought the fresh tomatoes and roasted tomatillos would bring an acid kick, but the main tastes are hot and sweet. I’ll see if the flavor has changed by tomorrow. Meanwhile I did some clean-up, dished up a quarter of my tart tatin and made a pot of tea.
