How to Hit it and Quit it: A Guide to Uncomplicated Bread for Lazy People

About seven months ago, it become overwhelmingly clear to myself and my roommates that I had a gluten intolerance. I wish I could say we noticed that eating things like bread and pasta was making me ill, but we only realized that there might be a problem when I didn't become ill after eating things without gluten. That's right, internet. Feeling sick and wracked with cramps after eating had become normal, and it was the absence of illness that tipped us off. I'll take Body Awareness for $100, Alex. In the months since, I am most surprised by the fact that I don't really miss gluten products and even the few that I do remember fondly aren't worth the pain of ingestion. So basically, internet, this post is for you. And my future roommates who are about to learn why I refuse to chip in every week to buy a $4 loaf of organic bread that somehow still has high-fructose corn syrup in it. This post isn't really about a recipe, but about a tool. The best tool.

Nope. Not this one.



Or this one.




This one. Like most useful tools, I "borrowed" it from my parents.

I firmly believe that the Bread Machine is the culmination of thousands of years of developing an easier way to mass-produce as many complex carbohydrates as possible. When you think about it that way, it's an integral part of your human heritage to own one of these. As if you needed any more convincing, take heart in knowing that when the Zombie Apocalypse happens (we all know it's just a matter of time) and the supermarkets are closed due to the hordes of ravenous undead surrounding the ragtag gang of survivors holed up inside, you, sir or madam, will not starve. At least until the bag of flour runs out.

There are many different types of bread machines, but they all work in basically the same way. You put the ingredients in; choose a setting (typically based on how dark you want the bread to be); and watch as the machine mixes, kneads, rises, and bakes your bread. There is literally no labor involved. You throw the ingredients in, walk away, and come back when the delicious smell of fresh bread has permeated the closet where you've been playing WOW for 4 hours.

Since I know most of you don't have a bread machine, the recipe I'm using is easily converted to oven-bread. It just takes a bit more effort. Challah bread is a traditional Jewish white bread. It's pretty great. It's also probably the easiest in The Bread Machine Cookbook to make, which is at least part of the reason it's such a favorite. You just hit it and quit it. Yeah, I could pay attention to it all afternoon and add fruit and nuts and stuff 20 minutes into the knead cycle, then add milk and vanilla 50 minutes later...or I can throw everything in at once and go to Barton Springs and compensate with peanut butter and honey later. Really, it's like being friends with benefits with bread.

Challah
(pronounced hallah, or, if you're a little hood, HOLL-A!)

Materials:

Bread Machine
Measuring cups

Ingredients: (medium loaf)

1 cup water
2 eggs
2 tbs vegetable oil

2 tbs sugar
1 1/2 tsp salt
3 cups bread flour
1 1/2 tsp yeast

Process (Bread Machine):

1. Add the ingredients to the bread machine pan in exactly the order they are listed. All of the wet ingredients go first, followed by the dry ingredients except for the yeast. This is because you want the yeast to hit the liquid last.

Halfway done already. Time for a beer to celebrate.

2. After you've added the dry ingredients, dig a small hole in the flour with your knuckle. Put the yeast in the hole.

Don't try to solve this one with probiotic yogurt.

3. For this recipe, use the "regular" setting on the bread machine. After you start the bread machine, it will begin making a whirring sound as it mixes the dough, followed by a rather shocking thumping noise, and finally silence as the bread is baking.

The silence of the loaves? No, you're right. Super lame.

4. After the bread is finished, allow to cool slightly before tipping the bread pan upside down and extracting the bread. Congratulations! You've just made bread with practically no effort whatsoever! Your great-grandmother would shank you out of jealousy if she were here to see this.

Process (oven-method):

1. Mix ingredients in bowl.
2. Knead.
3. Divide dough into 3 sections, roll them into strands and braid them.
4. Cover and allow to rise for 40 minutes.
5. Brush top with a beaten egg and sprinkle with poppy seeds.
6. Bake at 375F for 45 minutes.




Pro tip: You can buy bread machines at places like Goodwill and thrift stores for super cheap.

Effort Rating (On a Scale of 1 to Fuck This!):
Bread Machine- 2
Oven Method- 4

Cost Comparison:
Fresh Loaf from Local Bakery: $4.50
Homemade Challah Bread: $0.85

Shocking Peaches and Atomic Cobbler

This post isn't really going to be following my typical format. For starters, I wasn't planning to use these peaches to make cobbler. I was going to use them to make fruit leather in my car (or fruit roll-ups, if fruit leather sounds too weird for your delicate sensibilities). However, this being Texas, the day that I decided I wanted extremely hot weather the temperature began to drop and rain clouds formed. It hasn't really rained or gotten cold, but it is far too cloudy to do what I want. I held on to these peaches for over a week until finally throwing in the towel and using them for something else. I'm a bit bitter about it, actually. The dessert I replaced the fruit leather with, peach cobbler, is great. But...you know...I had a plan and shit. Whatever. Peach cobbler. But not just any peach cobbler. This peach cobbler is really weird. It forms a sort of mushroom cloud in the oven sure to alarm even the most confident Southern dessert maker before eventually sucking back in and shrinking, like a failed souffle. Also, it tastes delicious. It's possible that opinions on the taste are influenced by the rush of relief following cobbler implosion (I have feared for my oven at times), but I prefer to think that this is merely an excellent recipe. Also, you get to shock the peaches. If right now you're visualizing jumping out at them from around a corner, then this next bit is for you.

How to Blanch and Shock Fruits (and Vegetables!)
(and your mother, who wasn't aware you could even work a stove)

1. Boil a pot of water.
2. Add a pinch or two of salt if working with veggies.
3. Add vegetables or fruits a little at a time so they aren't crowded.
4. Important: Only boil for about 1.5 minutes.
5. Remove from hot water and place in bowl of ice water until cool.

Blanching and shocking is used when you want to cook something completely but don't want it to become soggy or mushy. It's an excellent way to prepare green beans and asparagus. We used it for the peaches because it made peeling them much easier.

Atomic Bomb Peach Cobbler
Recipe from Gourmet Gals,Austin TX

Materials:

9x15 baking dish
Mixing bowl
Sifter (optional)

Ingredients:

3/4 cup flour
Less than 1/8 tsp salt
2 tsp baking powder
1 3/4 cup sugar
3/4 cup milk
1/2 cup butter
3 cups sliced fresh peaches or 2 cans of peaches

Process:

1. Slice a stick (1/2 cup) of butter into pieces and put them in the baking dish. Put the dish in the oven while you preheat it to 350F melt the butter.


2. Sift the flour, salt, and baking powder together. Add in 1 1/2 cups of sugar. Slowly add in the milk, stirring until the lumps in the batter are gone.







3. Pour the batter into the baking dish. Do not stir to mix the butter and the batter together--they should be separate.


4. Lay the sliced and peeled peaches on top of the batter. Again, do not mix anything. No. Mixing.

See what I'm doing here? I'm not mixing any of these ingredients together. I'm layering. And yes, the peaches are going on top of the crust. Prepare for your mind to be blown. While you're preparing, you should also sprinkle about 1/4 cup of sugar on top of the peaches.

5. Bake the cobbler at 350F for approximately one hour, or until the top has started to brown. During the baking process, something magical happens. Don't panic. All that batter buried underneath the peaches begins to rise, thanks to the miracle that is baking powder, and suddenly you have a dessert on your hands!


This particular cobbler was fairly calm. The first time I used this recipe I peeked into the oven to find a huge balloon creeping over the edges of the dish. Cleaning the oven afterward was not fun. This time the growth wasn't very alarming at all. However, don't panic even if it does become huge and start to look hostile, as once you take it out of the oven it will deflate into something less menacing.

Like this!

Making Your Dinner Work For You--Chicken Stock

Around Thursday of every week, an interesting phenomenon happens in my house. While nosing around looking for something to cook for dinner, someone usually comes to the horrifying conclusion that there are no proteins left in the fridge. Or the freezer. Panic ensues. "What's the big deal?" you may ask. "Just pop down to HEB and get some pork medallions." But it isn't so simple, dear internet. We buy groceries once a week. Additional trips can happen if someone really needs something for a baking project, but generally what is bought at the beginning of the week is what we've got. This is great for Monday dinner. Tuesday dinner is usually extravagant as well. Wednesday is typically leftovers re-presented in some exciting new way. But Thursday? Thursday is where it starts to go downhill, culminating Saturday night in a carbohydrate binge generally featuring macaroni and cheese, slathered with bacon, because we've got to get our fix somehow. So, how to buy enough proteins to last the week without spending more than $10 on meat? Yes, we know about beans. And quinoa. And eggs. We utilize them all. But still, we haven't been able to buy enough meat on our budget to feed us through the week. Until now.

Chicken tenders, beautifully prepared for you and ready to pop into a pan, usually cost around $2/lb. But there's another way. A whole way, if you will. We realized that whole chickens cost around $0.85/lb. Less than half of the prepped chicken. Well, I can wield a knife. And a whole chicken, as we've discovered, can do a lot more than make one meal.

I know that it looks intimidating. A naked, footless creature covered in pale goose bumps that somehow manages to stare at you despite its lack of head. It also looks much more like something that was once alive than anonymous strips of meat. However, you can take that uneasiness and channel it into something else: the fact that the per pound price of a whole chicken is about half that of prepared pieces of chicken. Furthermore, there are a lot of ways that you can use a whole chicken. These are some of the things we did with ours last night:

1. Baked the entire chicken in garlic and peppercorn for dinner.
2. Fed the chicken giblets to the cat. Bam! Dinner for everyone.
3. Leftover chicken for lunches, other meals. Will probably feed us for a few days.
4. Made chicken stock from the bones and carcass (I'm sure there's a better word here).
5. After the stock was done, saved the bones and leftover bits of chicken for the cat. Meals for 3-5 days (before the internet freaks out here, no I am not just giving cooked chicken bones to the cat. I will be grinding them into bonemeal first and using them to supplement a raw diet instead of feeding him packaged corn meal with beef flavor).

From one chicken that cost us about $3.50, we were able to feed 3 people 2-3 meals, feed a pet two meals a day for about 4 days, and make about a quart of chicken stock.

Since I will assume that most people can manage baking a chicken (if I have assumed this erroneously, feel free to peruse Google for tips, or Bing if you're one of those people), I'm going to cover making chicken stock. "What is chicken stock?," you may ask. Chicken stock is essentially really condensed chicken flavor (now with real chicken!). You can use chicken stock to make broth, soup, casseroles, etc. You can use it to wilt kale and other vegetables. You can even use it to cook rice, quinoa, or couscous. Essentially, if you have chicken stock you don't need to buy bouillon, broth, or other bases to flavor your food. Additionally, you can add in any vegetable scraps you would normally compost or throw away-- carrot tops, vegetable peels, stems. All of these things add really great flavor to your stock and get to be used before they're discarded. So, let's begin!

Basic Chicken Stock

Materials:
Large pot
Slotted spoon

Ingredients:
Water
Chicken carcass (seriously, there has to be a better word for this)
Onion
Garlic
Salt

Process:

We made this stock with a chicken that was already baked. While doing so takes a lot less (5-8 hours) time, you don't have to. You can also use a raw chicken and baby it for 8 hours.

1. Add the entire chicken to a pot of water. Chop onion and garlic into large chunks. Add salt, pepper, herbs, whatever else you feel like.



2. Cook on Medium/Low heat for 3-4 hours or until most of the meat has fallen off the bone. The idea here is for about half of the water to slowly evaporate, leaving you with a pot full of condensed chicken-flavored water.



3. When the stock is done, strain out the vegetables, chicken meat, and bones. Be sure to put a bowl underneath the strainer to catch the stock.



3. Once the stock is free of bones and vegetable matter, you can either pour it into ice cube trays or freezer-safe tupperware containers to store for later.



4. To use, you can either sensibly thaw a container of chicken stock, measure the amount you need, and refreeze it, or do what we do: Hack at a block of frozen chicken stock with a knife until you've accumulated enough chipped pieces that could maybe add up to 2 cups.

Effort Rating (on a scale of 1 to Fuck This!)
4

Cost Comparison:
4 lbs whole chicken: $3.40
Veggie scraps: Free

4 lbs of chicken tenders: $8
1 jar of Better Than Bouillon: $4
1 quart chicken stock: $3
Raw chicken for cat: $2
Total if we'd bought separately: $17

Mint Ginger Infused Lemonade

As some of you might know, my roommate is a bit of a culinary genius. He used to be content merely with following other people's recipes, but now he's advanced to the point where he's taking other people's recipes and making them much better. He got the idea for this lemonade from another food blog he reads, but found the provided recipe unnecessarily convoluted and at times, completely nonsensical. Mostly, he looked at the picture at the top of the page and made up the following recipe. Note: While the recipe below is for lemonade, we've also used it to make orangeade. It also makes a great mixer if you add booze (we usually do).


Mint Ginger Infused Lemonade

Materials:
Small pot
Spoon
Measuring cup
Lemon juicer
Knife, etc.

Ingredients:
1 cup of sugar
1 1/4 cup of water
8 lemons
1/8 cup sliced ginger
Handfull of fresh mint


The main feature that separates this recipe from typical lemonade recipes is that instead of just adding the sugar to the water, you will be making a simple syrup and infusing it with ginger and mint (though you can add any flavors of your choice). The syrup can then be used as a sort of concentrate--you can store it and just add small amounts every time you mix up a new batch of lemonade.

Process:

1. Slice the ginger (you don't need to peel it) and the mint into thin strips, then add to a pot with the sugar and water. Heat on High, stirring slowly until the sugar is completely dissolved.



2. Once the sugar is dissolved, take the pot off the heat and allow to cool. When it has cooled, strain out the mint and ginger.


3. Juice the lemons.

4. Add about 1/2 cup of the ginger-infused simple syrup to a pitcher with the lemon juice and water it down to taste. Add ice.

5. At this point, you can garnish it with mint and enjoy a delightful, family-friendly mid-afternoon drink, or you can do what we do which is garnish it with mint and add some tequila for an adult-friendly mid-afternoon drink.

An innocent glass of lemonade...Or is it?!

Congratulations! You have now mastered a simple syrup. A whole new world of culinary possibilities is open to you. If you want to get really crazy, you can attempt to make your own candy or fancy desserts. If you think you'd like to practice more with this recipe, remember that you can add any flavor you want to the simple syrup--lemon zest, rosemary, vanilla, lavender. Go crazy! Also, note that a simple syrup can be made in any quantity. There just needs to be slightly more water than sugar so that the sugar can dissolve completely.

Effort Rating (On a scale of 1 to Fuck This!):
3 (but only because juicing lemons takes effort)

Cost Comparison:
1 bottle of Sweet Leaf Lemonade: $3
1 glass of homemade lemonade: $0.20

The recipe can make about a gallon of lemonade, depending on what ratios you use, so,

The Total Cost Comparison:
1 gallon Sweet Leaf Lemonade: $15ish
1 gallon homemade lemonade: $2.00

Yogurt, Even Easier Than Your Mom!

After a few months of trial and error (and at some points of miscommunication, near starvation), our house settled down into a predictable food routine. We have a list of mandatory staples--foods that need to be bought every week no matter what, and then whatever we get from the CSA for vegetables. Our grocery store staples tend overwhelmingly to be dairy and meats--two of the most expensive squares of the food pyramid. It took us an embarrassingly long time to realize that our dairy bill didn't have to be $25 per week (hey, we like sour cream, okay?) and that it was not only possible but also ridiculously simple to make most of the pricier items on the list. We started with yogurt, a staple that costs us somewhere around $5-$10 per week. We go through a lot of it because not only is it a breakfast/snack food for everyone in the house, but we also use it to make Indian food.
I was pretty shocked at how simple it was to make. There are plenty of recipes on the internet of varying degrees of complexity, but I feel that ours is probably the most simplistic and hardest to mess up. Also, full disclosure: My roommate was the one who originally started doing this, so I've never seen the written recipe and will be conveying step-by-step how we made it last night.

Yogurt for Dummies Recipe

Materials:

Crock Pot
Candy thermometer (must register between 100F and 180F)
Clean towel
Clean jars for yogurt
Whisk
Pot

Ingredients:

Whole Milk (in whatever amount you want of yogurt)
1 cup yogurt (Must be a live culture. Nothing with pectin or tons of sugar)

Process:
1. Pour the amount of whole milk you wish to be turned into yogurt into the pot and heat on Medium to 180F while stirring slowly. My roommate had the excellent idea of using whatever containers you plan to put the yogurt in to measure out the milk, and then adding half again as much to account for thickening. While this is happening, heat the crockpot on the lowest setting.


2. Once the milk has reached 180F, transfer it to the warmed crockpot and turn off the crockpot. Allow it to cool to 110F. This will take about 10-15 minutes. If the temperature is above 110F when you do the next step, it will kill the bacteria in the yogurt starter and you'll just have warm milk. Not nearly as exciting.

3. Once the milk has cooled, add about 1 cup of yogurt to the crockpot, whisking vigorously to prevent a film from forming. This will probably froth the milk. That's okay, and even desirable.

(Pictured: Desire)

4. After adding the starter yogurt and whisking it in, put the lid on the crockpot and cover the lid with a clean towel. Now leave the yogurt alone for 9-12 hours. Don't touch it, don't even look at it. We find it's easiest to start making the yogurt at night and then let it sit while we sleep. The longer you leave it out, the stronger and more sour the yogurt will be, but we find 9 hours works for us because we don't want sweet yogurt. Pro tip: Make sure the temperature in your house is at least 75F, otherwise it will be too cold for the yogurt to set properly.

All tucked in for bed

5. After about 9 hours, check on the yogurt. If it didn't thicken, the temperature in your house probably wasn't warm enough. You can reheat the milk and make it again. If it has thickened, celebrate your dairy abilities by posting a photo of your creation on facebook. Everyone should know how much you rock.

The only pic you've ever posted that doesn't shame your grandmother.

6. Now that everyone on the interwebs is reveling in your genius and superior culinary skills, it's time to put the yogurt away. Make sure the jars are clean (lids too!) and ladle away. For added Stick-it-to-the-Man-ness, you can use recycled jars or containers from the company you used to buy yogurt from. Take that, corporate America! Note: be sure to save about 1 cup of this yogurt to use as a starter for your next batch. It's very embarrassing to run out and have to buy more.

Victory

Effort Rating (On a scale of 1 to Fuck This!)
3

Cost Comparison:
32 oz. jar White Mountain Organic Yogurt: $4.25
32 oz. jar Homemade Organic Yogurt: $0.75

Sun Dried Tomatoes: Making Your Car Earn Back That Gas Money

I love Mediterranean food. The olive oil, the cheese, the pine nuts, the sun dried tomatoes. If I could eat tapas for the rest of my life and nothing else, I so would. I would also have excellent cholesterol and live forever, if pop-nutrition is to be believed. But alas, I don't have a villa in the south of Spain. I also can't really afford most Mediterranean ingredients. However, between this recipe and the preceding one, I think I'll almost be ready to start day-drinking on my porch and demanding that my roommates bring me an olive and cheese board with every carafe of sangria (isn't unemployment grand?).

The reason why all this European luxury will soon be mine to enjoy in the comfort of my East Austin slum? My roommate and I have discovered a secret. A dark and terrible secret that could bring down entire economies. Here it is: Sun-dried tomatoes are a rip-off. The sun on the Iberian Peninsula is no better than the sun in Texas. In fact, given the current color of my face, I'd wager that it's not as strong. Now, I know what you're thinking. "Sure, you can dry stuff here, too, but we have bugs outside. And if you do them in a dehydrator or the oven it still costs an arm and a leg in electric bills." True enough. But there's another way: Using the unbearable heat in your car as it bakes on a cement blacktop to dry your tomatoes. Seriously. You get to use a 150F oven for 12 hours a day for free. How cool is that? Very cool. Idiomatically speaking, of course. And let's face it, with gas vaulting up to $5/gallon, you can't afford to do anything else with your car anyway.

Sun-Dried Tomatoes: The Car Oven Method

Materials:
Wire baking racks
Cookie sheets
Knife

Ingredients:
Tomatoes (Roma tomatoes are good, as are cherry, etc)
Dried herbs if you want to get fancy

Process:

Depending on the type of tomato you're using, slice the tomatoes so there is a good amount of flesh on each slice. For cherry tomatoes it's enough just to halve them, but a Roma Tomato will require several vertical cuts. Place the baking racks on the cookie sheets and arrange the tomato slices on the wire racks. It's important to use racks so that there is ample air flow both on top of and underneath the tomatoes. If you've decided to be fancy and use an herbal blend (basil, rosemary, and garlic powder are a good place to start), now is the time to dust the slices with the herbs. Once the racks are prepped, all you have to do is stick them on your dashboard or in the rear window of your car (they need direct, pounding sunlight), roll up the windows, and let nature take its course. I recommend starting them in the early morning so they'll have the full day to dry. If they're still a little watery by nightfall, it's okay to leave them overnight and dry them for another day or two.

However, a word of warning: Be careful not to let them dry for too long. With our second batch, my roommate decided they were perfect by nightfall on day two. Rather than take them out at that point, he opted for bed. By the time he dashed back out to the car at the crack of noon, we had passed the point of dried tomatoes and moved into tomato chips. They were rock hard. We have them soaking in a jar of olive oil, but they still only soften when you heat them up.

Once your tomatoes are as dry as you'd like them, you have a few choices. You can use them immediately; store them in a cool, dry, airtight container; or vacuum seal them.

(Pictured: The only good thing to come out of my car since 2007.)

Effort Rating (On a scale from 1 to Fuck This!):
-2

Cost Comparison:
12oz jar of organic sun-dried tomatoes: $13.55
12oz jar of homemade organic sun-dried tomatoes: $2.50

Poor Man's Olives: Mustang Grapes

Several years ago, when I was a bright-eyed young college freshman still confident that my degree would be worth something, I had the great pleasure to take a class in ethnobotany. At some point I met a guest speaker who was a (self-styled) expert in Hill Country Cuisine. A descendant of the first German settlers in Texas, he gave me a recipe for brining and canning Mustang Grapes in a way that would make them taste like olives. Mustang Grapes, for those not in the know, are a native Texas grape characterized by an intensely bitter flavor and the painful rash that some people develop upon touching them. Until meeting the guest speaker, I wasn't aware they were edible. I still have concerns. Despite wanting desperately to try them (olives are an expensive habit), I've missed the extremely narrow window for grape picking for four years in a row. Not this year. I set an alarm. And made my roommates go with me on periodic walks to check the status of the grapes on the nearest public trail. And talked about it constantly so that they would remind me. Despite all that, I nearly forgot again. But this year, Bacchus was smiling down on me. Grapes were collected, and grapes were canned.

Unfortunately, I couldn't locate the original recipe until after I'd mostly made one up by reviewing art of brining and then mashing together some other recipes. However, it looked great when I was finished, so I'm optimistic.

Mustang Grapes:

Shown here in their unripened state, Mustang Grapes turn a dark purple when they're ripe and are commonly used to make Hill Country wines and jams. Despite this, most central Texans have no idea that the vines are anything other than a nuisance, as the grapes are so acidic that eating them off the vine is unpleasant. I'll be attempting to make several different recipes out of the grapes, so stay tuned for jam and (if I'm feeling especially bold) wine. Legal note: Check your state's laws on foraging before you head out in search of grapes. Texas, due to a weird legal holdover from ranching/herding days, does not permit foraging on public lands. However, Mustang Grapes are so common that you shouldn't have any trouble finding neighbors or friends willing to let you harvest.


Vaguely Remembered/ Made Up Recipe:

Prep time after harvesting:

Approx 1 hour

Materials:
Hand protection
2 large pots
basic canning supplies (jars, seals, water bath rack, etc.)
2 clean towels to rest the cleaned jars on

Ingredients:
2-3 pounds unripened Mustang Grapes (or a similar local bitter grape)
1 tablespoon white vinegar (into each canning jar)
Brine:
2 quarts cold water
1/2 cup salt (preferably canning salt)
1 tablespoon Cayenne pepper
2 tablespoon Rosemary
8 peeled cloves of garlic
1 tablespoon Crushed Red Pepper flakes

Process:
Start by washing the grapes and picking them off the stems. Be sure to wear rubber gloves (or put plastic baggies on your hands, if you're fabulous like us) to protect from skin irritants. Once the grapes are washed, add them to a large pot with the brine and allow to simmer for 10-15 minutes. The grapes will turn a lighter shade of green. It was at this point that I was reminded of the "witches' brews" and "cooking" I would do as a child in the backyard. The grapes looked a lot like acorns bobbing in a bucket, and the rosemary and pepper flakes did nothing to make the concoction look less like a child had picked up random leaves and twigs to make "soup."

Yum!

Regardless, I firmly told myself that I was a real grown-up now, making real grown up foods. While this inner dialogue and self-doubt is happening, boil your jars and lids in a large pot of water to sanitize them. If you have no idea why you just did that last step, go here to brush up on some canning basics. For the record, this is an acidic food so the Water Bath Method is recommended. When both of these steps are done, remove the jars and seals from the water without touching them with your hands, dry them on the clean towels, and fill the jars with the grapes and brine.

Put the seals on and press down without touching them with your hands, tighten the lids, and then put the filled jars back into the boiling water. Allow to boil for 20-30 minutes, as this will ensure a good seal. After cooling, store in a dark cabinet for 6-8 weeks before eating.

Update:
Literally minutes after putting the seals on the first batch, I remembered that I'd written the original recipe into my diary freshman year. A half hour of hilarious skimming later, and I'd found it.
So here it is, the ancient (or at least historic) recipe of the Germanic settlers of Central Texas
(I've elaborated a bit to make up for Germanic terseness):

Das Olden Fake Olives

Ingredients:
Green, unripened Mustang Grapes, pea-sized or slightly larger
1 tablespoon of white vinegar per jar
1 cup brining salt/ 1 1/2 quarts water (this makes brine)

Process:
Boil the jars, seals, and lids for 10 minutes.
Wash and de-stem the grapes, then pack them into clean, boiled canning jars. Add 1 tablespoon of white vinegar to each jar. Meanwhile, boil the salt and water together, stirring until the salt dissolves. Pour the boiling brine into each jar until the tops of the grapes are covered. Without touching the seals with your hands, place them on top of the jars and screw on the lids. Place the filled jars back into the boiling water for 30 minutes. Allow to cool and then store in a clean, dark place for 6-8 weeks.

Voila! So simple, you could do it on a homestead in a pioneer dress with no electricity or running water! Obviously the made up version is a bit fancier (and spicier), but if you've managed to scrounge enough grapes from your neighbor's fence, why not try both?






Effort Rating (On a Scale of 1 to Fuck This!):
6

Cost Comparison:
16oz jar of organic olives $9.59
16oz jar of organic grape-olives $0.15

I made 11 jars, so the total comparison looks like:
11 jars of organic olives: $105.49
11 jars of organic grape-olives: $1.65