Frozen Assets Lite and Easy: How to
Cook for a Day and Eat for a Month
by Deborah Taylor-Hough
The lure of being able to "cook for a day and eat for
a month" surely draws attention to Frozen Assets: Lite
& Easy . Deborah Taylor-Hough's latest work focuses on
lower-calorie cooking than her earlier volume. The author
begins with a shopping list and then goes on to turn those
ingredients into an inventory of freezable meals in quantities
large enough to keep a family going for weeks. The busy
cook responsible for feeding a large family will appreciate
the sheer organization required to make these tasty meals.
Blue Ribbon Preserves: Secrets to
Award-Winning Jams, Jellies, Marmalades and More
by Linda J. Amendt
If you've been laboring under the illusion that your
grandmother just smashed berries into a jar or that
pickles grew on exotic pickle trees, prepare to be enlightened
with Linda J. Amendt's Blue Ribbon Preserves: Secrets
to Award-Winning Jams, Jellies, Marmalades & More. Canning,
as shown in this exhaustive edition, is as much a science
as an art, and this book includes every detail to educate
the uninformed on what it takes to make great preserves.
Her recipes include the standards, such as strawberry
jam, and the obscure, such as Garlic and Onion Jam.
Amendt also does the public service of explaining the
real difference between jams and jellies. Special caution
about food safety holds a prominent place in Blue Ribbon
Preserves and Amendt teaches us how to chose optimal
foods for canning as well as how to safely store preserves
to avoid potentially lethal food contamination. Be prepared
for a bit of a chemistry lesson, which can be a long
and sometimes didactic read, but it's well worth it
for the critical food-safety information.
So complete is the book that Amendt, herself a recipient
of countless state-fair awards for her preserves, includes
pointers on how to succeed at such competitions (in
a very thorough chapter which includes insights into
how judges pick their winners). Blue Ribbon Preserves
covers everything that goes into a ball jar and more,
and in the process earns not only a tight seal of quality
but its own blue ribbon.
The Freezer Cooking Manual from 30
Day Gourmet: A Month of Meals Made Easy
by Tara Wohlenhaus, Nanci Slagle, Michael Phillips (Photographer),
Jay Tobias
The Freezer Cooking Manual from 30 Day Gourmet is a
comprehensive cooking system that teaches busy cooks
the art of spending one day assembling and freezing
a month's worth of delicious and nutritious entrees,
side dishes and desserts. This "hands-on" manual includes
time-saving worksheets, step-by-step instructions, healthy
tips, money-saving ideas and practical advice. The manual
also features: - 23 black and white demonstration photos
- 7 easy-to-follow steps - fold-out tally sheet - benefits
of cooking with a friend - choosing recipes for freezer
cooking - shopping smart - assembling in quantity -
freezing for great results - thorough appendix with:
- equivalency charts - metric conversion charts - freezing
time chart - blanching chart - list of basic cooking
terms - freezer selection and maintenance - power failure
procedures
The Freezer Cooking Manual from 30 Day Gourmet differs
from other quantity cookbooks seen on the market. -
Our system allows for choosing a different combination
of recipes each cooking day. - Our system allows for
incorporating personal recipe favorites. - Our recipes
are multiplied out for time-saving multiple entre cooking.
- Our recipes are "kid-friendly" and family approved.
- Our recipes are not repeated elsewhere in the manual.
Thousands of 30 Day Gourmets LOVE this manual and
attest to its sanity saving value.
Mary Bell's Complete Dehydrator Cookbook
by Mary Bell
A guide to food dehydrating shows readers how to make
preservative-free dried apple rings, candied apricots,
beef and fish jerkies, sun-dried tomatoes, corn chips,
herb seasonings, dried fruit sugars, and more.
Root Cellaring: Natural Cold Storage
of Fruits and Vegetables
by Mike Bubel, Nancy Bubel (Contributor), Pam Art (Editor)
Root cellaring, as many people remember but only a few
people still practice, is a way of using the earth's naturally
cool, stable temperature to store perishable fruits and
vegetables. Root cellaring, as Mike and Nancy Bubel explain
here, is a no-cost, simple, low-technology, energy-saving
way to keep the harvest fresh all year long. In Root Cellaring,
the Bubels tell how to successfully use this natural storage
approach. It's the first book devoted entirely to the
subject, and it covers the subject with a thoroughness
that makes it the only book you'll ever need on root cellaring.
Root Cellaring will tell you: * How to choose vegetable
and fruit varieties that will store best * Specific individual
storage requirements for nearly 100 home garden crops
* How to use root cellars in the country, in the city,
and in any environment * How to build root cellars, indoors
and out, big and small, plain and fancy * Case histories
-- reports on the root cellaring techniques and experiences
of many households all over North America Root cellaring
need not be strictly a country concept. Though it's often
thought of as an adjunct to a large garden, a root cellar
can in fact considerably stretch the resources of a small
garden, making it easy to grow late succession crops for
storage instead of many rows for canning and freezing.
Best of all, root cellars can easily fit anywhere. Not
everyone can live in the country, but everyone can benefit
from natural cold storage.
Pickled, Potted, and Canned: How the
Art and Science of Food Preserving Changed the World
by Sue Shephard
We're apt to ignore the importance of food preservation,
but its significance can't be overestimated. In Pickled,
Potted, and Canned, Sue Shephard tells the fascinating
and unexpectedly stirring story of the development of
preserved, portable food--a history full of human ingenuity
and mastery that limns our evolution from hunter-gathers,
dependent upon food availability for sustenance, to "season
cheaters" able to take nourishment when and where we wanted
to and thus discover the world. Food preservation's history
is the story of civilization itself, and in lively prose
readers discover the way the world was shaped by such
common yet extraordinary techniques as drying, salting,
smoking, and, most recently, canning and freezing. In
1800, Shepard writes, archaeologists working in Egypt
discovered the body of a baby perfectly preserved in millennia-old
honey, a practice stretching back in time and employed
by the embalmers of Alexander the Great, also buried in
honey. Sugar preservation, we are reminded, is one of
the major techniques of food keeping--mixed with fruit,
sugar produces jams, preserves, candied fruit, and other
time-defying food--and Shepard traces its history from
ancient Greece to the present. Similarly, she explores
other techniques including salting, responsible for keeping
meat and fish like cod palatable and at the ready; fermenting,
to which we owe soy sauce and other mainstays; and drying,
which gave us pasta and "ever-fresh" breads such as hardtack
and matzo. From ancient but ever-evolving preservation
methods like these to modern dehydration, which helps
produce food that sustains astronauts, the book details
simultaneously world-changing skills and culture in the
making. --Arthur Boehm
The Best Freezer Cookbook: Freezer
Friendly Recipes, Tips and Techniques
by Jan Main, Julia Aitken
While home freezers were almost unheard of before the
1930s, they are now a common appliance in North American
households. In fact, some 3 million freezers are sold
each year. What accounts for their popularity? Simply
that freezing is the easiest, most natural way to preserve
food -- whether it's fresh summer produce saved for enjoyment
in winter or prepared meals that can be easily thawed
and reheated when needed. Freezing also provides a number
of economic benefits, allowing consumers to buy food in
quantity at the best prices. What many people don't realize,
however, is that some foods are more successfully frozen
than others. And of those foods that do freeze well, using
the proper techniques can make a big difference in their
flavor and texture. That's why just about anyone who owns
a freezer needs The Best Freezer Cookbook. Here you'll
find comprehensive reference to the various techniques
for freezing fruits, vegetables, meats, poultry, fish
and seafood. In addition, the book provides over 100 recipes
-- including appetizers, soups, main meals, side dishes
and desserts -- all specially selected to give the best
possible results when frozen. Each section is designed
to help you get the maximum benefit from your freezer,
with helpful suggestions for easy entertaining, meal planning,
simple heat-and-eat dishes for busy weeknights, and freezing
baked goods. And, of course, no freezer cookbook would
be complete without recipes for homemade ice cream! The
perfect book for everyone who wants the best from their
freezer.
Complete Guide to Home Canning and
Preserving
by United States Dept. of Agriculture
This practical, easy-to-follow guide- newly revised
and updated- offers food shoppers an attractive, high-quality
alternative to high-priced overprocessed, and undernourished
foods. Virtually everything you need to know about home
canning is here: how to select, prepare, and can fruits,
vegetables, poultry, red meats, and seafoods; how to preserve
fruit spreads, fermented foods, and pickled vegetables;
how to test jar seals, identify and handle spoiled canned
foods, prepare foods for special diets, and much more.
Quick Pickles: Easy Recipes for Big
Flavor
by Chris Schlesinger, John Willoughby, Dan George, Susie
Cushner
Bold, crunchy and good for us, today's hassle-free pickles,
attest Chris Schlesinger, John Willoughby (co-authors
of the bestselling The Thrill of the Grill) and Dan George
(aka the Pickle Man), can add plenty of pizzazz to meals
or serve as a flavorful snack all their own. In Quick
Pickles: Easy Recipes with Big Flavor, they team up to
reminisce about their lifelong love of pickles and share
recipes and pickling lore that reflect cooking traditions
from all over the world. From El Salvadoran Pineapple-Pickled
Cabbage, a featured favorite at Schlesinger's East Coast
Grill in Cambridge, Mass., to Pickled Peaches in the Style
of India, their clear recipes and eager commentary will
tempt even the most ornery of taste buds.
