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Preserving Food without Freezing or Canning: Traditional Techniques Using Salt, Oil, Sugar, Alcohol, Vinegar, Drying, Cold Storage, and Lactic Fermentation Kindle Edition

4.7 4.7 out of 5 stars 875 ratings

More than 250 easy and enjoyable recipes!



"The methods here [will] inspire us with their resourcefulness, their promise of goodness, and with the idea that we can eat well year around."—Deborah Madison



Over 100,00 copies sold!



Typical books about preserving garden produce nearly always assume that modern "kitchen gardeners" will boil or freeze their vegetables and fruits. Yet here is a book that goes back celebrating traditional but little-known French techniques for storing and preserving edibles in ways that maximize flavor and nutrition.



Translated into English, and with a new foreword by Deborah Madison, this book deliberately ignores freezing and high-temperature canning in favor of methods that are superior because they are less costly and more energy-efficient.



Inside, you’ll learn how to:




    • Preserve without nutrient loss

    • Preserve by drying

    • Preserve with oil, vinegar, salt, and sugar

    • Make sweet-and-sour preserves

    • Preserve with alcohol


    As Eliot Coleman says in his foreword to the first edition, "Food preservation techniques can be divided into two categories: the modern scientific methods that remove the life from food, and the natural 'poetic' methods that maintain or enhance the life in food. The poetic techniques produce... foods that have been celebrated for centuries and are considered gourmet delights today."



    Preserving Food Without Freezing or Canning offers more than 250 easy and enjoyable recipes featuring locally grown and minimally refined ingredients.



    An essential guide for those who seek healthy food for a healthy world.

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    Product description

    About the Author

    Eliot has over 30 years experience in all aspects of organic farming, including field vegetables, greenhouse vegetables, rotational grazing of cattle and sheep, and range poultry. He is the author of The New Organic Grower (Chelsea Green, 1989, revised, expanded second edition, 1995), Four Season Harvest (Chelsea Green, 1992, revised, expanded second edition, 1999) and The Winter Harvest Manual. He has contributed chapters to three scientific books on organic agriculture and has written extensively on the subject since 1975. He also wrote the foreward to Keeping Food Fresh: Old World Techniques and Recipes (1999), by the gardeners and farmers of Terre Vivant. During his careers as a commercial market gardener, the director of agricultural research projects, and as a teacher and lecturer on organic gardening he has studied, practiced and perfected his craft. He served for two years as the Executive Director of the International Federation of Organic Agriculture Movements and was an advisor to the US Department of Agriculture during their landmark 1979-80 study, Report and Recommendations on Organic Farming. He has conducted study tours of organic farms, market gardens, orchards, and vineyards in Europe and has successfully combined European ideas with his own to develop and popularize a complete system of tools and equipment for organic vegetable growers. He shares that expertise through his lectures and writings, and has served as a tool consultant to a number of companies. He presently consults and designs tools for Johnny's Selected Seeds. With his wife Barbara Damrosch, he was the host of the TV series Gardening Naturally on The Learning Channel. He and Barbara presently operate a commercial year-round market garden, in addition to horticultural research projects, at Four Season Farm in Harborside, Maine. For more information visithttp://fourseasonfarm.com

    Product details

    • ASIN ‏ : ‎ B005LOPN0W
    • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Chelsea Green Publishing; New edition (4 April 2007)
    • Language ‏ : ‎ English
    • File size ‏ : ‎ 2.4 MB
    • Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
    • Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
    • Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
    • X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
    • Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
    • Print length ‏ : ‎ 223 pages
    • Customer Reviews:
      4.7 4.7 out of 5 stars 875 ratings

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    Customer reviews

    4.7 out of 5 stars
    875 global ratings

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    • paolovet
      5.0 out of 5 stars Un libro indispensabile per conservare senza elettricità
      Reviewed in Italy on 26 November 2022
      Verified Purchase
      Bel libro, con una impaginazione retrò. Le ricette sono semplici anche se, a volte, alcuni ingredienti sono di uso non comune in Italia. Sarebbe interessante un'edizione in italiano con l'adattamento degli ingredienti e delle misure imperiali a quelle metriche.
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    • C from NY
      5.0 out of 5 stars Useful and informative
      Reviewed in Canada on 25 December 2023
      Verified Purchase
      This book provides doable and delicious alternatives to canning. There are processes that I didn't know I could do. It takes us back to the days of forgotten knowledge. I also like the variability in amounts and ingredients. I was able to customize according to what I had on hand. There were treasures that I will refer to again and again.
    • Ross E. Nelson
      5.0 out of 5 stars This is a Top Ten book
      Reviewed in the United States on 19 December 2012
      Verified Purchase
      I write and teach self-reliant, sustainable living. I've preserved my garden produce for decades. Since I discovered this book 5 yrs ago, it has consistently been in my Top Ten books you should have. This book teaches how to preserve almost every food you can grow without canning or freezing. For years my favorite go-to book on food preservation has been Stocking Up: The Third Edition of America's Classic Preserving Guide But this book goes into topics not covered in most food-preservation books. The key to good self-reliance and sustainability is to have a wide range of options, in case one crop fails or another overwhelms your freezer or pantry capacity. This book gives you that variety and weaves it into a complete, sustainable Whole.

      The chapters on Root Cellaring and Drying are not as detailed as some might like, but there are dozens of books on those topics and anyone that has gardened or homesteaded for any time is very familiar with these techniques.

      Where the book really shines is in the chapters on the lesser-known (and ages old) techniques of brining, lacto-fermentation and preserving in solutions such as oil, vinegar and alcohol. I attended a class on brining and lacto-fermentation where we were given taste samples of the brined and fermented food. The taste, color and texture are stunning! After tasting brined green beans--bright, crisp and still tasting garden fresh after 4 years in a jar--I could never go back to colorless, tasteless, soggy home-canned green beans. Family and friends go nuts over my sauerkraut and mixed vegetables brined one jar at a time. (It was this class that led me to this book.) I love that I can use non-canning jars with this process. This saves me on my food budget, keeps more out of the landfill and I don't have to worry about getting valuable jars back when I give the food away.

      One reviewer worried about the lack of food safety in these methods. No need to worry. These are ages-old techniques, used for centuries before home canning was ever thought of. They do not create the anaerobic environment that botulism thrives in. If one uses good-sense--wash your hands and clean all work surfaces and start with clean, sterilized equipment and jars--these methods are every bit as safe as any other food preservation.

      This is one of very few books that get my complete, unreserved endorsement. Trust me, you WANT this in your home library. [...]
    • Stronger than ever
      5.0 out of 5 stars Essential reading ~ 'old solutions' to new (upcoming) challenges
      Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 29 May 2013
      Verified Purchase
      I think that many people looking to buy a book like this will be aware that our planet is changing. From peak oil to climate change ~ and everything inbetween ~ some of us are thinking that life is likely to be very different at some point in the future, and best we prepare for how to adjust now!

      This book will not disappoint such folk as it contains a host of energy efficient (indeed, many require NO energy!) concepts & recipes, and it is all soooo simple to follow. Ingredients are, for the most, readily available in your average pantry/local store and even measurements are not that necessary for many of the ideas.

      I also love the way that the contributors personalities shine through each recipe, and the little snippets of history that can be gleaned from them.

      All told, this is a wonderful, useful book which I've already given away to friends living off-grid in Eastern Europe to help them store this years crops (they loved it, so I couldn't leave them without it!), so I'm off to purchase another !
    • P. Remick
      5.0 out of 5 stars Food for the Gods from our Forefathers: What good taste they had!
      Reviewed in the United States on 22 August 2008
      Verified Purchase
      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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