I have found a time machine…and its name is grape jelly
Rather odd name for a post I suppose.
I have tried to imagine time traveling since I was a small child. It is a fascinating concept to me. I rarely think about traveling very far – the concept of knowing the future would take a lot of fun out of the present and while distant history would be fascinating it would take a lifetime to figure out the relevance of what I have learned (this is somewhat tongue in cheek 
)
My preferred time to travel would be focused on the timeframe of my life. I would love to visit the past and taste things I once adored in the context they were presented with my current views on food and taste and see what I would think. Perhaps I would hate some of my former favorite tastes or vice versa. I would find out if ketchup is the same today as it once was. I would want to go back to the day NEW Coke launched in Canada and see what the heck they were thinking.
I also remember going to Nove Scotia many times as a child and adoring something called Homestead Jam. I loved it so much that my aunt surprised me with a gift of 7 or 8 cans to take home with me. I delighted in the wonderful strawberry flavor. I think if I got to sample this gooey sugar paste today my impressions would be less than that of my 8-year old palate.
That is the dilemma of time travel – going to your past could ruin your memories of it. And I have a lot of food memories that would stand to be permanently altered, possibly in a negative way.
When Not Far From the Tree visited earlier this week, they brought a small load of fruit. One of the things they brought was concord grapes. It was my first time working with grapes in preserves and I was pretty excited to get these going. We made a grape jelly (crush grapes, cook to a boil for 10 minutes, strain through cheesecloth overnight, pour carefully into a bowl to remove any sediment, mix every cup of juice with three quarters cup of sugar and cook like a jam).
We had half a jar left over and had a taste. It bursts with flavor – the immediate taste was the sugary grape juices of my childhood before turning distinctly sharper. Every bite is a delightful burst of flavor from my youth that turns a corner into the tastes of my present pallet. I am sure I would not have liked this jelly nearly as much as a child – yet it serves as a delightful reminder of my childhood. And that, to me, is cheating time!