the fact that we’d have no kitchen this summer led us to forego planting the garden as well—it was a good choice considering how busy we are and how much added work there is when undergoing a major home renovation. we are very relieved not to be worrying about watering and weeding or where the heck we are going to wash whole baskets of produce.
we still however, crave the sparkling flavors of fresh summer veggies and have been lucky to rely on the kindness of friends and neighbors who are sharing the overflow from their gardens. in particular, our dear friend beckie not only lends her kitchen weekly for me to prepare foods for freezing, but never sends me home without a basket of greens, tomatoes, cucumbers, or even eggs for our table.
throughout the season, we’ve been getting together at her house to bag up berries, peaches, tomatoes—all those fruits that are too sticky to deal with when one doesn’t have a sink big enough to wash them.
in a corner of the porch we are using for our main living space right now, i eked out a little square to lay down a cotton rug for ripening peaches under newspaper. most of these will be for the table, but if they all ripen at once, i may end up freezing some.
yes, it’s that time of summer when the harvest is an unstoppable tide and it’s all we can do to keep up with it. that said, it’s important to make sure you know what you’re doing; preserving food has wonderful benefits but only if you use best practices. as an ever-evolving science, the rules of food preservation change and so should our knowledge about the topic, if for no other reason than that food itself is constantly evolving too.
it never hurts to know more about preserving food safely and efficiently, while retaining the best flavor and texture possible. everyone can use a little help in this regard and a good book on the subject can be a valuable friend.
enter a new release from the culinary institute of america, preserving: putting up the season’s bounty
i’m sure there are many more comprehensive volumes out there on canning and preserving—big thick books that cover every eventuality. but this book has something those books don’t—it’s small size, weight, and attractive layout make it so easy to digest that i’m actually reading and using it.
why, i can pop this baby in my tote bag and take it along to beckie’s house to read to her if i want—i like that.
inside, it’s filled with all sorts of useful information that we want to know. but what i like is that it gets you thinking about the endgame before you even start gardening or buying produce.
very smart advice since the end result is only as good as the quality of the produce you have to work with.
the preparatory chapters also discuss the concept of the pantry, how much you really need to put by, and how to store preserved goods properly. all good advice for laying a good foundation.
because let’s face it—putting up food is a labor intensive job, often hot and messy and somewhat pricey; maybe even more costly than average store-bought brands. the big payoff is a healthier, better tasting product of known origin; important enough for many of us to pursue despite the cost. the least we can do to pay ourselves back by treating the final results like the treasured goods they are.
the middle chapters of the book focus on various preservation methods, each having its own pages in the spotlight. for each, the authors discuss tools and terminology, introducing basic methodology and defining the terms you need to know.
this is where, as a beginner or someone who has limited space to work, you can choose the tools and strategies that will work best for you. for instance, one of the reasons i have yet to pursue canning, is that for so many years i lived in city apartments with no space to store big pots and boxes of jars that i would use but one month per year—or to store rows of finished canned goods either. i took to freezing because it was quick and easy after a long day of work and ziploc bags took up much less space when not in use.
however, freezing is not the best method for every food and it does require quite a bit of freezer space. i know i should explore canning for certain types of food and one of these summers, i will. i’ll probably get beckie to walk me through canning at some point; just not right now.
still, i love to read about it and doing so may spur me to try it on some level, sooner rather than later.
of course there is a chapter on pickling, along with drying, smoking, and freezing.
you’ll probably find it amusing that even though we don’t cook meat here, i still think it would be awesome to make my own bacon if i did include that in my diet.
i mean, it’s GOTTA be a far cry from what you’d buy in the cooler at the supermarket, right?
even as we work away at freezing fruits and vegetables, beckie and i come up with questions we need answered. it’s always nice to read more about a method i use all the time—why not? one thing i do know is that i don’t know everything about anything.
safe food storage is a topic that totally deserves to be revisited on a regular basis—scientists are finding out new information all the time and updating old, long-held beliefs about the “right way” to handle food.
finally, the book ends with a chapter on homemade pantry staples such as ketchup and other condiments, with advice on filling up that pantry you prepared at the start of the season. it’s nice that they circled back to the beginning i think; it makes me feel that it’s in keeping with the growing cycle of the garden.
here the authors discuss how to clean and assess your jars and equipment as you empty and put them away during the winter—when to get rid of pieces that won’t be useful in the future, how to keep an eye on the shelf life of preserved goods, and how to keep the pantry clean and free of pests. a lot of information for such a small volume.
doesn’t that sound like a terrific little book? wouldn’t you like to own one? well as luck would have it, our friend nathalie who is the director of publications at CIA (and an awesome knitter), has very generously offered us two giveaway copies of preserving!
here’s how it’s going to work: we’re going to give away one copy here on the blog and one copy on our knitspot facebook page. erica will mastermind how the FB giveaway will work and announce it there. the cool thing is that you can throw your name in the hat in both places for two chances to win (though we will award only ONE book per winner).
to be included in the blog giveaway, leave a comment at the end of this post by 9 pm ESDT on sunday august 24th, telling us what favorite summer food you are preserving (or wish you could). we’ll pick a winner and announce it early next week.
a big thank you to nathalie for giving us an advance peek inside the preserving book and providing giveaway copies for a late summer treat.
195 thoughts on “pickled pink”
I cannot wait until I can preserve cukes and make pickles!
Thanks for the giveaway and for still posting about garden things, even though you don’t have a garden this year. I LOVE reading your blog, especially this time of year, and living vicariously through all of your preserving 🙂
I would love this book! It’s almost spring here, and I’d love to stock up when things are in season. My favorite thing to cook so far has been dilly beans (pickled green beans), but I’ve never actually canned them – just eaten them from the fridge.
Wow, that sounds like a great book. I keep admiring the way you put food away for the winter but don’t know how to do it myself.
I would love to learn how to preserve baby gerkins, I just love them!
About 8 years ago my 2 sons started a family tradition when we picked too many baskets of strawberries from the local farm. They decided to make their own strawberry jam and it was such a success that we’ve been doing it every June since then. I’ve also added Spiced Blueberry Jam and a couple of chutneys as well as Apricot Lemon preserves. The whole family looks forward to receiving them every year. This sounds like a great book to expand the repertoire.
How cool is this! I bought large flats of strawberries at the local upick farm and sliced them up for the dehydrator. They are now all packed away to be used in baking or in oatmeal during the long cold days of winter.
I always freeze a lot of the blueberries, blackberries, and rhubarb from the garden, and depending on the size of the roma tomato crop I may can or roast and freeze it. I guess my favorite thing, though, is making blackberry jam and preserving it. Haven’t done it yet this year.
I put up pickles and preserves. I also make limoncello and the summer batch will be ready to give away for Christmas gifts. I hope I win.
I’d love to start working on preserving anything. Making my own jam would be wonderful!
I love making strawberry jam and cucumber pickles. I have lots of tomatoes so I really want to try my hand at canning those.
Thank you so much for this giveaway.
I am going to try my hand at canning pickles this summer. I have made jams in the past and freeze some summer veggies.
This year’s weather has diminished out crop somewhat. Too hot to fast and too wet. BUT I do freeze as much as possible. Green beans are a particular favorite. But batches of vegetables ready for soups and veggie stews are always a must. The book looks very informative. If I don’t win I will probably buy a copy!
Too much rain this year to put in many vegetables successfully, but I have a stack of blueberry-filled freezer bags for the winter, and blackberry season is in full swing, so a “jam session” awaits, and there’s always the prospect of canning applesauce in the fall.
This looks like a great book. I’ve always relied on the Ball Blue Book, an old Joy of Cooking, and the advice of friends (who know how to make jam without pectin). Having all that information, and new ideas, in one place would be just wonderful!
I love homemade sauerkraut and want to take this project on. Thank you for the chance to win this book!
I am looking forward to making our own ‘sauerkraut’ with my father in law again this autumn. But at the moment, I am working my way trough making raspberry jam! the colour of the jam goes perfectly well with my knitting though…
I would love the win the copy of the book, thanks for this interesting post anyway.
I love zucchini relish and rhubarb jam. I picked rhubarb (from my own plant) when it was ready earlier in the season and placed it in the freezer where it is just waiting for processing when I have the time.
My garden has done poorly this, so I’m not putting up much. But if I could, I would put up my own canned tomato products, stewed and paste especially. That sounds like a book I could really use, thanks for the offer.
I froze a lot of raspberries from my garden – they were especially abundant this year. The book sounds interesting.
Wow! This book is just what I have looking for…small, easy to read, and understandable directions. I would love to have this book.
I love how it goes beyond canning! I would love this book!
This would be a great little treasure to own! I am a beginner so I know I have a lot to learn.
Wow! That sounds like an amazing book. In the Southern Hemisphere I am planning my summer garden and what I wish to preserve this year. It is so easy to preserve too much of one thing and not enough of another. The more options and plans the better.
I miss homemade pickles and jams. If I win ill definitely get started on that!
Looks like a good book!
I would love to win a copy! We didn’t remodel this year but did move from one house to another over the summer so no big veggie garden for me this year either. I’ve been going through withdrawal and would love to study this for updated methods to use with NEXT year’s harvest.
Corn. Cut right off the cob and frozen. Pull it out for thanksgiving and everyone will love you
My small kitchen=freezing not canning, at least not yet. I love freezing organic blueberries and cherries. The blueberries I throw into oatmeal in the winter, and the cherries I eat one by one as soon as they thaw. All cherry lovers should freeze cherries!
Since moving to Austin, i’ve fallen in love with Texas peaches. I would love to preserve that great summer flavor to enjoy all year long!
I’ve never done any preserving, as I don’t know how! Wouldn’t this be a great book to learn from, though.
Oh, the peaches have been so delicious this summer – I wish I knew how to preserve them. But that would mean taking away time from my knitting! Someday I’ll give it a try…
Oh, I would live to win a copy of this book– my “newest” preserving book is probably 25 years old, and you’re right– things change! I have recently finished preserving peaches: peach jam, peach/Earl Gray preserves, peach bourbon butter and sliced frozen peaches for smoothies (had a bumper crop from the tree in our yard). Later this month, I hope to can salsa– it’s become a yearly tradition to have a (small) bonfire in the yard and have friends over on one of the days when there’s a fresh vat of salsa on the stove!
We have a very small garden (our first in decades) and have a lot of cucumbers. Who knew they would grow so well? I would like to freeze some peaches and blueberries. And, I’d like to make some jelly & jam. This book looks really good.
I am doing peaches this weekend,…both canned and jam,….would love that book!!!!!!!!!
I love to hear the “pop, pop” of the lids sealing on my canned tomatoes. That is my favorite memory of our canning days as a child. I haven’t read a canning book in awhile. I think it’s time I did.
I would love a chance at this book. Looks like fun 🙂
Thank you for the lovely giveaway opportunity! I would love to add it to my cookbook collection. We just finished putting up blueberries and we’ll be making tomato sauce and salsa in the coming weeks.
I just made blackberry jam last weekend with blackberries I picked up roadside in Maine on a work related trip. YUM!
With friends and neighbors who have summer apple trees, I am up to my ears in applesauce. I love how quick and easy it is to make and so satisfying seeing all those jars to get my 7 kids through the winter!
This is the first year I planted a garden and I’m really enjoying watching everything grow. Would live to get some new ideas from this book. Thank you.
I have had a garden for several years and this is the first year I have really felt the need or desire to can. I want more control over the what exactly is in my food and this will be a great way.
Last night I froze tomatoes for the first time. It was soooo much easier than canning them!
Looks like a fabulous resource!! I don’t often have the energy for preserving, but when I do, it would be great to know the best way to do it!
Right now, my little container garden isn’t big enough for us to preserve any of the veggies we grow, but garden space is one of my “must haves” as my husband and I house hunt. I would love to grow more and preserve the hot peppers he loves, and I have dreams of filling a second freezer with my harvest and having rows of jars of preserved food in my pantry!
What a great book! Even if I do not win a copy I will be getting this.
I have dreams of pickling and preserving, but I haven’t managed it yet. I did freeze some blueberries! I find it reassuring that you had this huge (to me) garden, and you managed it all through freezing. Next summer, that’s my year.
I wish that I could preserve watermelon.
Even though my only attempt at canning, crab apple jelly if you must know, was a complete disaster, I keep wanting to try it again, I have a Meyer Lemon tree in my yard that is producing a ton of lemons…Meyer Lemon Marmalade would be such fun to make! Would love a copy of this book.
I would love to preserve all of the tomatoes, small – large, that my garden is producing faster than my family can consume them.
Drying, Canning, Sauces, Ketchups, Oh My!! The possibilities are endless.
Thank you for sharing such an amazing resource!
I wish I could preserve something this year – perhaps peaches. Next year we’re moving and I’m hoping to join a CSA, which will force me to use lots of local fresh produce.
This year was the first year that I was able to have a garden in a few years since I actually was living in the same house all season! 🙂 Probably my two favorites are tomatoes and zucchini. I dried a bunch of Juliet tomatoes and froze shredded zucchini. I’ll be making soups over the winter and other dishes for using the tomatoes and the zucchini is for when I have a craving for homemade zucchini bread! Yum! I want to try my hand at canning too and was thinking about it this year, but my schedule was crazy enough that it just didn’t fit. Hopefully next year I can change that and I really want to try my hand at jams and jellies!
My favorite thing to preserve is zucchini in the form of marmalade. Simple to make and it tastes amazing!
I found a blackberry patch in the country and plan on picking some to make blackberry jam. Yum!
Me me me me me!!!! I want a copy of that book!
I would love a copy of this book!!
I haven’t done much preserving but would like to learn. I did pick and freeze blueberries this year.
I made a batch of strawberry lemonade concentrate which was the last thing I preserved in my kitchen prior to moving out and it will be the only project for this summer since we are temporarily between homes!
The saddest part of living in New York City for me is not being able to preserve foods. I miss the amazing apple sauce and dilly beans I used to put up every year.
And yet, I actually have the space to be able to store jars — an entire empty cabinet in my kitchen — and to store preserves — an enormous pantry. And there are beautiful “pick your own” places in the Hudson Valley and Long Island that aren’t too far for an adventure. You’re giving me ideas, Anne — and so is this book! Thank you for the thorough review, and for getting my mental wheels moving.
Tomatoes, tomatoes, and more tomatoes! My home canned tomatoes were wonderful. No garden this year, but it will be redone for next and I’ll be canning them again.
Tomatoes, tomatoes, tomatoes. I love homegrown tomatoes so I plant them in my flower beds and reap the rewards by freezing the overflow for winter soups.
I’ve been canning green beans. This book looks great.
So far this year I have frozen apricots (my favorite!), plums and yesterday made 6 pints of bread & butter pickles from our cucumbers. This book looks like it would be a great addition to my canning/preserving library. Hope I win!
We have great farm markets and I am enjoying making some jams and pickles….next will be bread and butter pickles. Looks like a wonderful book crammed with lots of info. Thanks for chance ,happy knitting and preserving.
I love rhubarb, but I always eat it all fresh, so there is nothing left to can. I’d love to have enough to can something, but it is to tasty not to eat! One year I did a tiny batch of strawberry-rhubarb jam and it was amazing.
Just finished freezing (and eating) a bushel of Red Haven peaches. Yum!
Peaches!
I would love to learn more about preserving food! I don’t much now, but I would love to save my own fruit and tomatoes.
We never grow enough tomatoes to satisfy our desire to eat them and then also have enough left for canning and ketchup making. I’d love to have our homegrown tomatoes year round!
Thanks for the chance at the book — I too love reading about food and food science 🙂
So far I’ve canned dill pickles . I have a dehydrator and have dried tomatoes and figs.
Tomatoes, any time. And all the summer berries but I don’t think canning would be the best method. Here in Quebec we have the wonderful berries from l’île d’Orléans, and the wonderful blueberries at the end of summer that you can pick yourself in a number of farms. Would love to win this book, it looks very interesting indeed. Thanks a lot for your detailed presentation and summary.
Every morning, we have homemade preserves from our own fruit on toast. The most recent to go on the shelf is plum, but it looks like quince may be the next one to head for the kettle.
The cool summer has really slowed the tomatoes. Usually we’re freezing them by now.
I will be freezing my next batch of peaches so that we can enjoy fresh peach cobblers all winter.
This would be a fabulous resource for a newbie canner (me). I’m trying jam this year but would love to expand beyond that. Thanks for offering this!
My favourites are berries – strawberries, blueberries (Nova Scotia blueberries are the very best) and blackberries – but I seldom freeze them. I would like to learn to do this properly as well as peaches. I also would like to learn to can tomatoes. I love sauces in the winter time. Hoping my name is chosen. Thank you for the opportunity.
i’d love to be able to preserve tomatoes and green beans.
My favorite this season has to be the cucumbers I made (and canned!) into my Great Aunt’s long standing family recipe. It is a 10 day process using a fermenting crock and a lot of pickling spice, but they are just the best. Worth the work.
I started gardening 5 years ago. Every year we add more and more gardening space. We learn something new with every growing season and each season has created a larger harvest for our family. This fun hobby has now evolved into food preservation in the form of canning and freezing. This year my favorite food to preserve has been tomatoes. I can’t find San Marzano tomatoes at my local grocery store so I chose to grow them myself. The new preservation book you mentioned sounds amazing!
My favorite is my husband’s Dilly Beans with garlic – NUMMY!!!
I would like to learn how to can tomatoes too!
pickles! but I’d love to branch out….
I thought I had a favorite (grin) but this is our 3rd year without a garden nor access to affordable farm fresh produce – so all if it is my favorite! (Grin) Jams, jellies, apple sauce, apple butter, pie filling, marinara sauce, dried sun gold tomatoes. All of those would vie for the top of my favorite list!
Bacon – hmm – that could be the hook for my husband (grin).
would love to preserve peaches and tomatoes! I’ve been interested in canning for awhile (though not sure why) but haven’t braved it yet. The book looks really interesting!
When I had a big garden I used to do a lot more preserving, but after a decade with only a tiny plot I’m way out of practice. Last year I started to pick it up again. My favorite things so far are applesauce (sometimes with pears for variety) and peaches. I adore summer peaches. Last year’s greatest success was a peach mango habanero sauce–mmmm! Would love to learn more for when my garden gets bigger 🙂
Tomatoes – blanched, peeled, seeded, chopped, vacuum-sealed, and frozen. I have not gotten along well with canning in the past – this book sounds like a perfect motivator to try again!!
At the moment I am freezing an abundance of okra. This year has been a great year for pickles. We’ve pickled carrots, green beans, beets and turnips. We’ve also made a killer hot pepper relish.
Salsa from my tomatoes and peppers, but both crops were crap this year, so not enough to can anything. I still have some from last year, so I’ll have to make it stretch until next year.
I have strawberries in the freezer. I have tried making jam in the past, but it never set up for me. But it was still good over ice cream! To me the vegetable that screams summer is a good home grown red tomato. The grocery store tomatoes are just sad. Unfortunately, I’ve not had a good crop this year. 🙁
I usually make some jelly, but not this year. It has been a weird summer season and I haven’t gotten the fruit that I normally find. I also like to make pickled squash every summer. It is great in the winter as reminder of what we have in abundance in the summer.
Blueberries & peaches! I love popping open a can of peaches in the middle of winter. Yum…
Green beans waiting to be blanched and put up in freezer bags for meals this winter. Thanks for the contest.
I would love to preserve all the yummy berries available in Oregon in the summer to cheer up those dismal grey winter days I know are coming. I live in an apartment with a small frig/freezer and small kitchen with limited storage space, so I’d love to learn how to maximize what I can store. Right now I just freeze a few pints of berries in ziplocks.
I was looking at this book just the other day in the our local bookstore and am so thrilled you have this in your giveaway contest! SC and Georgia peaches, East TN blueberries and the 15 bushels of early Kieffer pears I picked last week and the tree is still full of them. This year I am putting up jams and jellies as the weather here has been so weird for tomatoes.
my favorite things to preserve are all the berries we get here in Oregon. I freeze most, but also make jam. In fact, on my to-do list for today, is to assess my freezer contents as I am going to get some Hatch chili’s to freeze up..
Jam, plum if possible, this year, we picked berries from the coast. Easy to freeze. I do need to learn more about taking care when preserving.
Pickles, jam, jelly. Yum they’re all good. We do lots of freezing too!
What a fabulous sounding book!!!! I’ve haven’t made jam in awhile, but this might just get me back into it.
This year I was given a crop of red and yellow cherries. I was away from home so did the only thing I could think of at the time (after making cherry crumble, cherry clafoutis and eating them raw. I preserved them in alcohol. The French supermarket sold “alcohol pour fruit” which was found to be vodka and I also used gin. 10 Kilner jars later…I hope to use them as Christmas gifts.
I love canning, would love a copy of this lovely book.
what a great book! I will be making crabapple jelly this weekend!
Great book! I’ve added it to my wish list.
Not much of a gardener, but I do pick the wild berries growing on the property and freeze them. I luv them atop pancakes, French toast or in coffee cakes!
Mahalo.
I am currently buried under an avalanche of beans and a tsunami of tomatoes to freeze and can, so I definitely need this terrific book! I love that it covers planning, pantry storage, and things I’ve wanted to try – like bacon!
My mom and I just canned some Roma tomatoes. . .tomatoes are definitely my favorite thing to have fresh from my own canning. I would also love to try to make some Dilly beans this season!
My sister and I made chutney and it was a great success! Would love to do more, with peaches and pears! That book looks sensational!
Two of my girlfriends and I get together every Tuesday night to can and process food during this season.
I think my favorite food is more like candy but it’s a bit of a process to get it to that point. To start, we can peaches in a dark syrup made with brown sugar and flavored with Rum extract and our favorite pie seasonings. These really need to soak in the jars for several weeks. They are incredible then, when you open the jar, but I often take the next step and stick them on the dehydrator to make easy to eat snacks for work. It’s divine!
This book looks wonderful. I rely mostly on my Ball Blue book and my imagination.
I have my best friend’s mother in law polish garlic dill pickle recipe that I rediscovered after many years. I’ve made one 20-lb batch, with another coming next weekend.
Ooo I’m a California girl who relocated to the midwest about 5 years ago. Suddenly we can plant a vegetable garden and harvest and I know nothing about canning/preserving, so this would be a welcome addition in my house!
Santa Rosa plum jam with cardamom – so so good.
Oh my goodness, pickles.
My paternal grandmother (Mimi) made watermelon rind pickles. They were one of only three things that she enjoyed making: potato salad, Thanksgiving stuffing, and watermelon rind pickles. They were so good. I remember the flavor of them even after all these years.
My maternal grandmother (Grandmom) made all kinds of pickles: dills in jars so filled with dill seed that you had to wipe them off before eating; less salty dills with feathers of the actual dill weed in each jar; bread-and-butter pickles (cuke and onion), with mustard seeds, sweet and tangy; and plain old afternoon pickles – cucumber slices that she would salt, then set in a bowl of vinegar from lunchtime to dinner. After dinner, she, my aunts, my mother, and I would sit around the table, spooning out the vinegar while we talked. Those were good days.
Last night I put up 7 pints of peaches. The night before 7 pints of peach butter. Tonight? Frozen peaches I think! However, by far the best preserve of the summer is old-fashioned pectin-free strawberry jam. My husband, who doesn’t like jam LOVES it and was lamenting that he finished another jar.
Oh! Love this giveaway! I received a canner/pressure cooker for my B-day and need to add this to my very small library. I don’t have a garden, but we have farmers markets almost every weekend where we can pick up Alaskan grown produce.
Thanks, Anne!
Well, that’s what I get for not reading the rules! (see my other comment) I’m not preserving yet .. but when I do, it’ll be Pickled Beets! hopefully just like my Grandmother’s.
Summer/early fall is my time for putting up jams and jellies that I give away for Christmas. Just finished a batch of peach jelly with cinnamon, and am planning pear jam with ginger and creme de cacao in September.
I love putting up sour cherries & blueberries. There’s nothing like having a ‘fresh’ pie in Dec or Jan when the snow is blowing.
cherries. cherries are the thing that I MISSED out on this year (lots of traveling for during during the peak cherry season), and I am sooooo sad not to have a freezer full of them.
I love preserving food, for all the same reasons as you do. My freezer is starting to fill up, this week alone I have put in 4 quarts of tomatoes (my first year freezing some, I have always just canned them) 4 quarts of peaches, 4 bags of corn (parboiled and cut off the cob) and 2 quarts of honeyed applesauce, made from apples picked up off the ground from a friends lonely neglected tree.
I too prefer freezing because you can whittle away at it. I like to collect things as they ripen from the garden, eat our fill that day, and quickly freeze the rest. Canning is better for some foods, but you need to have a LOT of peaches or tomatoes or beans and it can be an all day job. Freezing is much easier.
My fAV SO FAR HAS BEEN RHUBARB CINNAMON JAM…OH MY! MARY IN CINCINNATI
Peaches – – pull them off the shelf in the middle of the Pacific Northwest’s cool winter and make some nice peach crepes – – LOVE the sun that’s canned in them!!
Love the fruits of course….but it is our homemade ketchup from homegrown tomatoes that is the fave all around. Friends love it…so holiday gifts in progress as well!
This sounds like the perfect book to compliment my garden. Right now we have several variety of apples and pears that we are try to eat (cornmeal pizza dough, a little pesto, sliced pears, some nuts, and a little cheese on top), and then there are tomatoes to eat, dry, can, or freeze. I usually take a huge batch of pears and mash them up with a pastry blender so it is chunky and then freeze this in 1-2 cup sizes. We love ginger pear muffins with our own pears. Sadly, our peach trees are done for the year.
I’d love to preserve the wild berrier growing behind my garage
Just dusted off my canning supplies after several years of not canning. It was great making chutney and green beans. These will be enjoyed all winter and until the next canning season. Tis book would be so handy for me to do even more in the future. Thanks for the give away
New to the game but this book looks like a good place to start.
My 10 year old put up green beans this summer and will be doing apple sauce soon. She would love to have it!
My favorite is cascade berries, but those are done. I am now interested in possibly freezing some of the multitudes of apples I have starting with my August ripening William’s Prides.
I keep thinking I’ll try my hand a preserves, jams, jellys, chutneys, chow-chow, all those things that make life a little more interesting. And then, I remember stories I heard as a kid about the pressure cooker blowing up, and someone getting ill and so ‘next year’. This book might give me the confidence to know I’m doing it right. I am a stickler for food safety.
My husband and quickly froze our blueberry crop (which I picked off 6 bushes) by spreading them on parchment lined cookie sheets. When they were frozen they were easy to slide into freezer bags via the parchment and easy to pull out just a few at a time.
Applesauce! Every year I have to put up several jars of applesauce. I put cinnamon sticks in with the apples as they boil down. It smells so good!
Applesauce! Every year I have to put up several jars of applesauce.
I would like to say that I want yarn the exact color of the crabapple jelly we just made. There is nothing more lovely than crabapple jelly.
Michigan has the best peaches this year, and I’m thinking I ought to put some up…
Wishing our weather were better this summer… it’s too wet this year, I’m afraid there won’t be enough good tomatoes to put up. I did make some wonderful red raspberry jam though before the rains began.
Pickles! Pickles! Pickles! And wax peppers!
It would be great to get some applesauce canned. I managed to freeze some good strawberries as well as make some terrific jam.
This book looks wonderful! Thanks for the info as well as the opportunity to win one. Director of Publications at CIA…sounds like a fun job!
I love making jam with blueberry and strawberry-rhubarb as two favorites.
Thanks Anne!
What a great resource. Thanks for sharing!
I would love to get a copy of this book! I put up jam, pickles, sauce and tomatoes every year and would like some new pointers..
Thanks Anne for telling us about this!
This is the first year I’ve ever canned, and it was surprisingly easy. Although I’ve made freezer jam and apple butter for many years, I’ve always been afraid of the water bath method. This week, my husband and I successfully put up 28 quarts of peaches. This book seems like the natural next step for us! Thanks for the great giveaway opportunity!
I haven’t canned for years and have been wanting to get back to it. This sounds like a great refresher and way to get caught up with the latest!
When I had my own big garden & house (in the process of moving now) I canned and dried tomatoes every year and used them all year long. This year, in the middle of packing up, I picked 2 quarts of cherries from my young sour cherry trees and made a couple pints of jam to take with me. I’m looking forward to getting started on the next big garden and pantry and root cellar and all the things I’ll put in it.
Crab apple jelly and crab apple butter is my favourite home made preserve! So good and something that you just can’t easily go out and buy.
I grew watermelon radishes this year. When you cut them open, they are pink, green and white inside and look like a watermelon. No one eats them. 🙁 So, I found an online recipe for radish relish and plan to make it this weekend. The family will eat spicy relish!
I canned a pectin-free cherry jam this summer using an online tutorial. It came out perfectly, however, it is so horribly sweet that I don’t think it will get eaten. sigh
Thanks for the chance to enter your giveaway! The book sounds great.
Dilly Beans! My mothers cousin used to make them and I miss them so much.
Just moved into a house with more than enough land for an awesome garden. I can still remember my grandmother’s glass jars on the steps to the basement and do so want o ave a row if my own.
Apples! We have an old apple tree that was here when we moved in and it’s giving us awesome apples for applesauce! Which I am so happy with since I have a 4 month old who will be eating it all winter!
Tomatoes are my favorite. I do make bread and butter pickles from cucumbers. The book looks like it is full of good information.
I flash froze 3 gallons of blackberries from our vacation in NC. I love them in my green smoothies! Now that we’re more and more whole foods it would be nice to have a book on how to keep them safely.
peach jam — I have a beautiful tree!
What a great book! I think I’d learn so much!
I freeze most items in the late summer: okra, green beans, corn. I have canned jellies and jam in the past and need to take that up again! The book looks wonderful – thanks for the chance to win.
Well I’ve done tomatoes in the past…just a simple red sauce to make anything out of it. This year I made plum jam, rhubarb sauce & today peach salsa & I also got a dehydrator! So I made Anne’s favorite tomatoes dried (yum! They’re almost gone! ) and now fresh peaches! We shall see how they turn out. This book sounds just lovely! I just may have to purchase a few for Xmas presents 🙂
Maybe the book would break me out of my strawberry jam jam. It is good, but I think variety is the spice of life. I’d love to try other things!
I wish I could preserve tomatoes for sandwiches! Haha. But since I can’t, I would absolutely love to own this book and learn how to make my farmers market buys last into the winter!
I haven’t been able to have much produce this summer, but I’m really hoping to enjoy the end of peach season. It would be great to have preserved peaches all year round.
Cucumbers! Tried to make my own pickles this year for the first time and it did not go so well. But I’m not giving up yet…
In our home, it’s all about preserving tomatoes – salsa, marinara, stewed, frozen, sun dried, roasted… You name it! Yum!
My favorite is making Tomato marmelade or jam. My Mom used to make it in Argentina all the time. It’s great on toast for breakfast.
I love the taste of canned peaches. We aren’t able to grow them locally, but a farm stand down the road trucks them in from downstate MI. Unfortunatly, an impending move is keeping me from canning much of anything this year–would love to have this book ready on the shelf for next year!
My freezers are full of ripe, lucious blackberries from the yard. Lucious microwaved with oatmeal and water, then topped with raisins, cinnamon and cottage cheese for protein. Everyday breakfast when fresh fruit is not around.
my favorite things to preserve are my raspberries and my neighbors apricots. i only make jam with the apricots and freeze the berries. i am a canning lightweight and need to learn more. this book sounds absolutely phenomenal and looks like not only a great resource but one i would sit down and read cover to cover. thanks for the review
Corn. Love the taste of fresh corn.
Strawberry jam…my grandmother always sent us home with jam when we would visit. My mom canned all kinds of things every year and my sisters and I always talk about the rows of canned food in our basement, my dad even built her a whole shelving unit for one wall of the basement. I wish the 2 of them were still around to tell me how to make it work but, I’m going to start slowly this year.
No question about it, 7-day pickles. These pickles are sweet, but not too sweet. They are work, but worth it.
Thank you for the chance to enter. I’ve been putting up rhubarb chutney. It’s awesome!
I love the green nail polish! I’m waiting for Damson Plums to become available to make jam with. They are our favorite and have a nice tart flavor.
I’m planning on canning tomatoes next month when we get to the end of the season in my part of the country. And I’ll do some stone fruit jam over the next couple of weeks, too.
Peach Jam! My absolute favorite during long, cold winters. Thank you for the chance to win a copy of Preserving.
I have my first veggie garden in 10 years and am excited to be trying refrigerator pickles!!! And hopefully lots of tomatoes for paste and sauce for the freezer.
I love learning
Learning about Everything
Especially about something so-yummy as food from the garden
I’m always concerned about sanitation
This books seems to be a good sourse along those lines
Tomatoes and Peaches
So colorful, so juicy
So many ways to serve
Hugs
I love love love preserved lemons! Have not made them in a whole, but I will soon. This is a lovely book!
Tomatoes!
I try to can tomatoes each summer with tomatoes purchased from the farmers market (we’ve not had good luck growing them). And applesauce. Love homemade applesauce!
Tomatoes and pumpkins are my favorites. Right now we have two freezers and we are thinking we may have to add a third.
I make berry jellies and have made green tomato relish and pickles. I would like to branch out to more preserving. Thanks for offering the book!
We have just moved into a house with two apple trees laden with fruit, so I will be doing everything possible with apples, including experimenting with cider…
Freezer blueberry jam and if at all possible using wild blueberries.
Oh! I didn’t get to plant a garden this year either because we moved, but usually this time of year I am up to my neck in produce, getting ready to can. This looks like a great book.
I would love to put up fresh tomatoes – I’ve dry roasted some and frozen others, but canning seems to preseve the flavor like no other method.
What a beautiful volume — please include me in the drawing! I would be canning blackberries this year if the canes had not been cut down last fall… may have to put up some peaches instead.
I’m afraid of canning, so we’ve mostly been doing quick-pickles, freezing, or turning things into sorbet and then freezing them (cucumber-melon has been the most exciting sorbet so far)
Roasted tomato sauce, pesto, and refrigerator pickles. If there are a lot of tomatoes to come I may make some more tomato jam, a big hit from last year.
Every year the garden is different, and I am trying to figure out what things are worth the effort. Besides tomatoes, that is:)
Looks like an excellent book to walk a person through preserving and canning processes. Would love to be better at both.
My husband always plants more heirloom tomatoes than we could ever eat. I’m making some lovely sauce with the excess and freezing it for th deep of winter.
Pickles, sausages,tomato sauces, mustard
This year the apricot didn’t bloom: no apricot-pineapple jam or dried apricots 🙁
and the cherry trees were not their usual exuberant selves, so we left the meager harvest for the all the nesting robins in the neighborhood. That means no vissino (look it up!), dried cherries, or freezer packs ready for pie. The book looks great, and I’d love to have a second book on preserving – it’s often helpful to have multiple recipes and methods to compare.
SALSA! We plant tomatoes, onions, and peppers every year and can our own. We put up a lot of fruits and veggies, but Salsa is what we want the most. My mouth waters when I even see a jar!
All of my canning/preserving knowledge has come from my Mom, who learned from Grandma, etc… I grew up helping to make all kinds of jelly: chokecherry, crabapple, raspberry, blueberry, cranberry & my favourite strawberry jam. one of my fondest memories is when Mom told me i was old enough to stir the pickles – that was my job every day. I was so proud!
Even now, she’s still teaching me – no longer do we spend a week making icicle pickles. this past Christmas she taught me how to make refrigerator pickles & i tought her how to pickle brussel sprouts. This looks like an excellent book to add to her Christmas list. thanks for the tip!
The favorite are the frozen blueberries that we’ll put on our cereal for a bright taste of summer in the middle of winter. I also made dill pickles and will freeze poblano peppers from our small urban community garden plot.
I so love putting away summer’s bounty to be enjoyed in the winter months, that it’s hard to choose my favorite thing. I would have to say canned tomatoes. Nothing compares to the scent of those tomatoes and the memories of summer when you open them on a winter day.
I just threw away an old government publication I had from my mother(!) on preserving and canning, figuring the info was really dated. I love freezing because I can put up extras as I cook all summer. My favorites are chard pie, blanched greens, and berries. When I take out berries in the winter the sun shines.
I’d love to have a pantry filled with jars and jars of tomatoes from my garden, and jam, yeah jam from our own fruit, that would be awesome. The book sounds fantastic, a great giveaway!
I look forward to canning every year, and my favorite part of it is admiring my filled pantry shelves! Then of course I become almost “freak-like” not wanting to use any of it because it looks so pretty and organized. But each year, I get over my “hoarder” ways and give the majority of it to others as gifts. There is nothing better than something homemade and delicious!
My favorite summer food to preserve are hatch green chiles! They’re from Hatch, New Mexico, and I buy them from the case from our local grocer, roast them, and freeze them. So amazingly good!
I love looking at shelves of canned goods I’ve put up myself. My two favorite things to preserve at the moment are berry jams and frozen Lady Cream Peas or Crowder Peas. Oh, yes – and frozen pesto!
Oh looks like a nice book….I’m always interested in canning books.
The best day of my summer? Spent the day with my 86 year old dad making pickles with the cucumbers, dill and garlic from his garden. (I did remember to write everything down! He remembers-I won’t!). Doesn’t get better than that! Thanks Daddy!
Love homemade jam….
Strawberry, strawberry rhubarb, saskatoon berry and rhubarb orange marmalade were this year’s offerings!
Sounds like a great book! I do a little jam-making, but that’s about it so far. Would love to expand my repertoire. Wish I had a pantry to stock!
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