Red Cedar
More apocalypse, less angst
In the Bookshed: Keeping the Harvest
Now that it’s food-storage season (so quick! where did the summer go?) I am once again reaching for canning, preserving, drying advice in the form of this most excellent book, first published in 1990: Keeping the Harvest.
I picked this up several years ago as part of my first forays into food storage, and since then it has become a part of my late-summer and autumn kitchen. It describes all the procedures you would want, including pressure canning, and has a good starter-set of food preserving recipes (for more canning recipes I recommend Ball’s Blue Book of Canning if you can find a copy or the Bernardin Complete Book of Home Preserving).
What I particularly like about this book is that it lists each type of vegetable and fruit and all the possible storage techniques for it. Got too much summer squash? This book has suggestions for the best ways to store it (grate and freeze, puree and freeze, drying). Want a few sure-fire pickle recipes? They’re in here too. Along with dehydrating-time charts, freezing tips and curing suggestions written in easy-to-understand language. This is the best all-round reference I’ve found on any of these subjects, and definitely the one I would recommend for all food-preserving newbies out there. Supplement this with some canning recipes from the Internet and you’re pretty-much good to go!
Red Cedar 
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