A tart-sweet jelly cooked from the purple sea grapes that ripen on Florida's beach dunes — a foraged coastal preserve of Black Bahamian-Florida and beach-edge communities. Free fruit from the shoreline, put up for the year.
Sea grapes grow free on Florida's public dunes, and gathering them is a coastal foraging tradition shared by Black Bahamian-Florida and beach-community families. Sea grape jelly is the shoreline put up in a jar.
Sea grapes are rich in anthocyanins — the deep purple antioxidants also found in blueberries and muscadines — which support blood vessel health and reduce inflammation. The fruit carries vitamin C and potassium. As a foraged shoreline fruit, sea grapes provided free antioxidant nutrition to coastal Black communities. A lower-sugar jelly preserves more of the fruit's benefit.
Gather ripe purple sea grapes, simmer with a little water, strain the juice, and cook with pectin and sugar into jelly. To modernize, use less sugar or a low-sugar pectin, and let the fruit's natural tartness lead. The fresh ripe grapes can also be eaten straight off the dune.
Free, no account needed to ask.