When we asked the readers of the French organic gardening magazine Les Quatre Saisons du jardinage (Four-season gardening) to share their secrets of fruit and vegetable preservation, we admit that we were somewhat skeptical. Hadn't all good recipes already been published? The result: 250 recipes, most of them previously unpublished, encompassing eight preservation methods, and providing readers with the means to preserve all these foods in optimal ways. Given the boundless stores of popular wisdom about food, this book hopes to make a start at “preserving” those stores for future generations.

Customer Rating:
Summary: Food for the Gods from our Forefathers: What good taste they had!
Comment: I'm so glad that this book exists! All the simple and proven methods of food preservation that any of us can use and all without a freezer or complicated sterilization processes.

What a joy to read about simple and natural methods that not only preserve fruits and vegetables, but that make them taste better and in many cases make them positively gourmet!

Every person should grab a copy of this book whether they grow their own vegetables or not. Imagine being able to purchase fruit in season at reasonable prices, and then take some of it and preserve it for the dark days of winter when it would be prohibitively expensive. Our forefathers (and those great foremothers that did the preserving and came up with the 'recipes')knew to preserve not only the bounty of the summer and fall harvest, but to preserve the nutrition that is stored in the produce.

Vinegar, oil, salt, alcohol, sugar, drying methods too simple to name were all developed so that they (and we!) can eat food fit for the Gods all winter until the spring harvests. Each one of us can make a simple salt and water brine and preserve green beans. Each one of us can string a multitude of fruits and vegetables on strings and dry them for later rehydration in stews, soups, cobblers and pies.

What a book! What simple and flavorful methods! I'm so glad that this collection from the 'Gardeners and Farmers of Terre Vivante' was compiled so that all of us can benefit not only from their expertise, but from the nutrition and flavor that we can capture and hold over from harvest to harvest.

Get this book. Bronze it and pass it on to your children, friends and family. Everyone should know how to preserve food...whether they have bought it or grown it. Invaluable! TEN stars!

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Customer Rating:
Summary: Too Good to Be True
Comment: The title of the Short should be "Preserving Food . . . Chapter 4." It was great to get a closer look at the book before purchasing the full version - I definitely will now. However, the "Short" doesn't give a glimpse into each subject. It only covers the philosophy behind these types of preservation, and Chapter 4: Preserving in Oil. What content it did contain was very informative.

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