Canning and Freezing Books

I have been using this book for 27 years and mine is just falling apart from all the use. I have 93-dozen jars and at the end of the season all of them are full and with the instructions in this book, my failure rate has been extremely low.

For 25 or more years I have been using this book, but last fall, while moving from Texas to NM the moving van was stolen with all our belongings stolen with it. 43 years of marriage gone. Now it's time to start my canning again and I needed my favorite book. No matter how many books I have purchased none compare with this one. Days of searching the net and now I can again enjoy my days in the kitchen.

I have my mothers' old copy of this book she gave me about 25 years ago. Now she misses it so I bought her the updated copy on Amazon last year. There is not another canning/freezing book that holds a candle to this. Easy and fun to read, with the simplest and most concise instructions-you can't beat it. Tons of great recipes- I treasure this one.

I first found this book in a library over 25 years ago. I was amazed when the book store said they could order it. Since then it has become stained and the back is broken, but I always return to it. It's a definitive reference book for me. As many times as I have bought canning books since then, they always fall short of this book. The only thing I adjust is the amount of sugar in some of the recipes. If you can find it, buy it. And if you are tempted to lend it, I suggest you lend photocopied pages instead. I had quite a tussle getting it back from my best friend.

I have used this book over 20 years for canning and freezing recipes. I especially enjoy that the book includes many vegetables and fruits that are not usually found in the newer books on the same subject. During the peak season, this book literally becomes my "bible".

The Busy Person's Guide to Preserving Food: Easy Step-by-Step Instructions for Freezing, Drying and Canning is an excellent resource if you need help learning how to preserve food. It gives the preferred preservation method for all different types of fruits and vegetables then also gives alternate methods for each as well. You can definitely preserve produce you buy locally as well as produce you grow using the methods in this book even if you have never done so before.

This is an easy book to follow. I've never canned before and this book made it easy. The results were good also.

I used this book when i was just starting to learn how to can, and it was a savior. Provides detailed, step-by-step instructions on how to can, freezer, and dry store. Also contains great basic receipes to get you started.

I used to feel intimidated about preserving fresh vegetables. I thought all sorts of expensive equipment and a vast knowledge of preserving were needed in order to successfully preserve food. Then I purchased a copy of The Busy Person's Guide to Preserving Food and was delighted to find that I could almost effortlessly preserve many of the fresh vegetables I grew and still have good results with the finished product. Now, I look forward to a healthy crop of green beans, yellow squash, zucchini, and tomatoes and no longer wonder what I'll do with all of the produce.

I LOVE THIS BOOK, IT HELPS YOU KNOW WHAT THE FASTEST WAY IS TO SAVE THAT EXTRA VEGTABLE EXTRA WITH OUT DOING ALOT OF READING, IT TELLS YOU ALL THE METHODS FOR EACH ITEM AND WHAT KIND OF RESULTS TO EXPECT. I ALSO LOVE THE RECEPIES IN THE BACK OF THE BOOK. MY FRIENDS KEEP BORROWING IT AND ENDING UP GETTING THEIR OWN COPY!!!

Good service. Product arrived in good condition and in a timely manner. Would do business whit this seller again!

I ordered this book to find out how to cure bacon and smoke meat. I found it very helpfull. I was having a hard time in finding a cure, but the book sugested a cure by mortin. I will tell everyone I know. If you need a good meat book this is one of our favorites.

This is a really good book to have on hand. It has a lot of really nice recipes and it is very easy to read. The directions are very clear and well written.

This book teaches you how to safely---with large emphasis on safety and hygiene---prepare, and store meat using a wide variety of canning, freezing, and curing methods. The text is well-illustrated with diagrams of equipment (including sausage makers, and smokers) and methods. There are plenty of helpful tips, and handy charts indicating how long a product should be heated per pound (with time adjustments when cooking at altitude). The recipes in the book are massive. Most require 100lb of meat, pounds of salt, and gallons of water; a few handful of recipes call for 3-10 pounds of meat.

Join the generations of hunters in the wild & in the aisles of local supermarkets who have learned to can, freeze, cure & smoke meat, fish & game with this simple, safety-conscious primer about making beef jerky, bologna, cured turkey, bacon, corned beef, pemmican, clam chowder, & much, much more.

It will also turn you on to other ways to prepare your meats, & fill you with satisfaction when you look in your freezer, on your shelves & in your cupboards.

Very glad it's been re-printed - my ancient copy was getting unreadable!

Produced by the company that make the cans most of us use this is a good book to have on hand especially for beginners. It has good recipes and plenty of illustrations to follow that are exceptionally helpful.

A classic that needs to be on your shelf for reference. Some forgotten information in the book that is useful and not available elsewhere.

This book is great for both the beginning and the advanced home canner. The step by step instructions walk you through the basic procedures if you're a novice, and have wonderful recipes to use with your canned foods if you're an expert. The book begins with an overview of equipment and tells the beginner what to buy and how to use it, then goes right into food prep and the canning process. Highly recommend this book. Although long out of print, you can get it used here through Amazon and it's WELL WORTH the money. Would make a nice gift if included with a waterbath canner and some jars!

This book should be considered the bible of all canning books. It has detail instructions that are easy to understand. I had never canned before this book, but everything I have canned since has turned out perfect. It has some of the most wonderful recipes for jams and jellies. It even tells how to pickle foods and make sauerkraut. I would recommend this book to anyone who wants to learn how to can. Expert canners might even learn a new thing or two. Enjoy your reading!

This is a great investment for how to harvest, freeze and create recipes for any particular fruit or berry. No pictures, but no pictures are needed. I enjoyed it.

This book has an answer to every question! Please be aware that even though tomatoes are fruits, they are not covered in this book but she does cover them in her veggie book. I have both and would highly recommend them to any gardener of all levels. I am probably somewhere in the middle and I love her writing style...so easy to understand and doesn't make you feel stupid. Easy categories and clear index make it easy to refer back and forth.

GREETINGS:

The rising costs of food and it's transportation by truck is forcing us to grow more veggies, and if you believe in the peak oil crisis, and we have no rail system to back up food truck deviveries,;then this book has great ideas of the past for safe canning, etc.

I do a lot of preserving of food and try to eat in season and use nearby food sources. There were some new (old) ways I was not aware of.

Very nice book. Lots of information on very old, but also contemporary, methods of food preservation. Recipes that have never previously been published. Simple, practical, ways to store the harvest.

For the most part, I really like this book. I have lots of ideas that I am dying to try when my garden starts to bear. I have a ceramic-invection cooktop so I am wary of putting a fully loaded 30 quart pressure cooker on top of it.

I would consider purchasing an additional book if you are unfamiliar with food safety and home food preparation. I gathered that the contributors and the authors are aware of these practices, but did not really elaborate on them very much or stress crucial points necessary for food safety, like cross-contamination or not washing the vegetables well. The book does stress the importance of not using chlorine-treated water so it must be filtered in some way to remove it. Don't want to kill the good bacteria, I suppose.

I'm not sure how well these concepts would work if you have a very small kitchen or don't have a keeping room or cellar. Instructions are given for digging out a small keeping area and topping it with a large flat rock you can slide off. I just gathered you need a good work and storage space.

Directions for making drying racks with screen are given. I have heard of using a discarded screen door for large amounts of drying.

I often do not have huge amounts of fruits and vegetables on hand to do massive canning. The amounts here seem to be very manageable, as well as easy to try out the different types of preservation on the same item to see which you prefer.

I didn't quite know what to make of the jelly/sugar section. The blueberry recipe sort of bewildered me as you are to mix fresh blueberries with what is left of last year's blueberry mixture (not pure blueberries). Sorry, but I don't have any of last year's mixture as I just bought the book and I'm not even sure what was in last year's mixture. I assume it contains some sort of fermented starter, like a fermented bread starter.

I was intrigued by the alcohol section, especially the recipes for elderberry and dandelion wines.

Some of the recipes are for basic canning. You have to have hot, sterilized jars. It wasn't mentioned, but when the recipe tells you to place the lids on the jars for a seal, I think the jar still needs to be hot. The overall impression of some of the recipes is that you meander around the kitchen and process when you feel like it. I saw my grandmother do this when she only had enough to fill a few jars and she called it canning, even though she also used a pressure canner.

This is not a literal cookbook to me. This is a collection of recipes from residents in Terre Vivante. Some of the recipes are vague at best, offering no measurements or ratios. Some are more specific, thankfully. As I am unfamiliar with the finished product, I am afraid that I might over or underestimate the amount of herbs or spices. Some of the recipes gave instructions on how to preserve zucchini and other vegetables through drying, but no idea how to use it in a recipe. Do you put it in dry or have to rehydrate it first?

A few of the recipes seemed to be different versions for the same item, so perhaps those could be combined for one functional recipe.

This book has a lot of recipes that sound interesting and worth trying, but I would like to see the issue of food safety be addressed in greater detail and for each recipe (or at least for each section). For example, I would be very hesitant to use the recipes listed in the chapter on preserving in oil, for fear of botulism. I would be interested in hearing a review from somebody who works at the FDA or USDA.

Perhaps readers might be interested in the following references:
1. Solomon H, Kautter DA, Rhodehamel EJ, et al: Evaluation of
unacidified products bottled in oil for outgrowth and toxin
production by _Clostridium botulinum_. J Food Protect 1990; 54: 648-9.
2. Morse DL, Pickard LK, Guzewich JJ, et al: Garlic-in-oil associated
botulism: episode leads to product modification. Am J Pub Health
1990; 80: 1372-3.

This book is fabulous!! It is great for projects also for young children.

I love the fact that this book covers canning (pressure and water bath) drying, and root cellaring all in equal detail. I have been searching for a good jerky marinade for about 6 months now with many flops inbetween. This book delivers. I LOVE the marinade for beef jerky in it. I have also made the peach jam, very tasty. It was interesting to read about creating a root cellar, and got me thinking into how I can incorporate that method of preservation into my lifestyle. Very good book!

This is a good book for the beginner with a lot of fine details. I have enjoyed reading the book and using a couple of the receipes but I find it a very close copy of the Ball Bluebook of Home Canning, etc. In fact, many of the receipes are quoted from the Blue Book. It is one I will use many times again though.

I just bought this book today, and made the tomato sauce freezer recipe with all of the tomatoes from my garden. Let me tell you, the tomato sauce is so delicious, it could pass for a yummy tomato soup. There are other many delicious-sounding recipes in this book that I am eager to try, and I know I will definitely get my money's worth from it.

I love that the author is just as concerned as I am with what goes into her food. Too many commercially canned foods are loaded with tons of sodium, high fructose corn syrup, and other unpronouncable ingredients. If you are health-conscious and want to serve your family only the best, high-quality preserved food, this book is for you.

Also, I do not agree with the author in not doubling the recipes. Some of the recipes are so small, and there is no way I will not double them to save time. I have made very large batches of jams and jellies for years without any problems, and cannot understand why the author would state not to do so. I also don't agree with the author in not changing the ratio of sugar in the jams and jellies recipes. Most recipes for jams and jellies contain way too much sugar, and I have had no problems halving the sugars in my jams and jellies as long as I have enough fruit pectin added to compensate. If you don't mind tons of sugar in your jams and jellies, then this shouldn't be a concern.

Overall, this book is excellent, and is one of the best canning and preserving sources I have read. I believe beginners as well as advanced canners would find this book very helpful, if not, at least the delicious recipes will be a great addition!

"The Big Book of Preserving the Harvest" is a refreshingly concise how-to for beginners and experts alike. Great illustrations for the directionally-challenged, lots of useful charts. Those include charts for processing times in water bath AND pressure cookers, quantities of produce needed per quart jar, sugar substitutes, etc. Then, there are the simple recipes for fancy foods. This book is a great leasure read or a satisfying quick reference tool, surely a wonderful gift for anyone who enjoys working with food.