SCUPPERNONGS

I didn't think to try get a photo til I had them bagged for the freezer.  This is a peek down into the Ziploc.

We stopped at a wonderful little roadside market-stand on the way back from Georgia last Sunday---the bright yellow boards and the crookedy signs of "HOT BOILED PEANUTS" and "GEORGIA PEACHES" beckoned us in, and we browsed the still-hot aisles perfumed with all sorts of vegetables---the shucky snap of crisp corn, the dry rustly scent of net-bagged peanuts, the sharp, thickety sweet of the scuppernongs and musky-dines.   (I had to say it, just once).

We got pale-rosy plums, fat with sweet pulp, and two enormous sweet potatoes, big as kids' footballs (I baked one last night, and it served all four of us, sliced into soft-slumpy golden rounds and topped with butter and brown sugar).    

Chris asked the yearly question:  "Do you have any GREEN peanuts?"    And we seem to be early or late, every time, settling for the dry heft of a couple of the orange-net bags.    He'll put a big boiling on in the huge new stainless crockpot in Caro's kitchen one of these mornings, and they'll simmer all day, so he'll have quite a few bags for the freezer to nuke for a quick snack any time.  (moire non re: that one bag I open and crack for him as he drives, every time we head home with our bounty). 

I browsed the jellies and jams and relishes---almost choosing the hot pickles, the pickled okra, the moonshine jelly, just for the lark of it.   But I just made a big batch of the hotsy-totsies, there's still some okra from last year in the fridge, and neither of us is partial to 'shine, especially not to the ruination of a perfectly good Cathead biscuit.

I selected a clear green hot pepper jelly, for nibbles with crackers and cream cheese, while he hand-sacked six pounds of scuppernongs for jelly-making.    Scups are the paler, thicket-cousin of the muscadine---like lightly-bronzed grapes.   Their thick skins are gently veined with the pale, Braillish lace of a cantaloupe, and will pop right off with a squeeze, leaving the round innards intact like the famous "peeled grapes" of movie-vamp and small-town Halloween House fame.   

I washed these and put them in the freezer soon as we got home, for they tend to brew their own liquor  and draw every gnat between here and Memphis, if left in the bag very long.   They will be cooked off, run through Mammaw's "jelly cone" to get that tang-stronger-than-Concord into the juice.   Then the juice will be strained and cut with just a little white-grape juice for the jelly-making.    

It's been in the Forties-to-Sixties here since we got home, and just the having of these familiar old Southern Scuppernongs has left the lingering fragrance of Fall in the house .