Wednesday, August 28, 2013

Preserving Fruits, Nuts, and Seeds


 


Dave and I are happy to announce that the new book, "Food Storage: Preserving Fruits, Nuts, and Seeds" is published now and available at amazon.com in both kindle format and print.  This is the sequel to "Preserving Meat, Dairy, and Eggs".  We've spent the last several months working on this one, and now we're starting on "Preserving Vegetables, Grains, and Legumes", which we hope to have out by the end of the year. 

We both have a lot of real-life chores in our gardens and kitchens, as well as all the other normal work and goings on, plus families that include kids and grandkids.  But we have a lot of fun working on these books in between everything else. 

Dave is amazing in his tireless experimentation with food preserving in his "lab-oh-rah-tory" (kitchen) and I appreciate his contributions.  I have tons of emails I need to dig through and post of the "Dave's Kitchen" series we were featuring earlier on in this blog.  When we thought we were done with this book, he thought of a bunch more stuff...


"Lemons can be candied just like oranges.  The rind tends to be a little tougher but they go great in some recipes that call for lemon zest, like cakes, fruitcakes, bread or rice puddings and even for "Lemon Chicken"."

"Cranberries can make good sweet or savory pickles. The savory type of cranberry pickles are OK but the sweet are very good."

"Walnuts in honey. My daughter has, on several occasions, lightly roasted walnuts, put them in jars and poured (very) hot honey over them and they are really good after they've sat for a while to let the honey soak into the nuts. We have 1 jar that"s been on the shelf for a couple years and they appear to still be good (still sealed). Out of the jars she's done only one failed (started to ferment) but I suspect she didn't heat the honey hot enough or didn't get the jar cleaned well before adding the nuts and honey."

"Nut butters. I have made nut butter(mostly Sunflower) by running seeds through my grain mill(hand cranked).  I have a set of steel burrs so it doesn't make a mess that cant be cleaned up."


"Canning Bananas, If you add enough lemon juice to the banana "mush" it can be water-bathed. It isn't really just canned bananas done that way but it is pretty good. The ones I've done that way didn't sit on the shelf very long, "I" ate 'em all! lol."

"I don't remember if I ever mentioned it but "sulfuring" dried fruit will keep the pests away if it is stored in containers that aren't sealed (ie.. oatmeal boxes) or aren't bug proof."

 

Out of all those months of notes from Dave, plus my own experience and research, we put this book together, and we hope you enjoy it!  We welcome comments, questions, and suggestions about the book or anything related to prepping, food preserving, or this blog.

 




(NOTE: It looks like the Print version won't be available for another day or so.  It's done with the publishing process and just taking longer for Amazon to post the Print book information. Sorry for the inconvenience.  Meanwhile, the kindle version is available now.)
 
 

3 comments:

  1. Yes Sue, it is a lot of fun putting the books together and I love to experiment and relearn what our ancestors knew as common knowledge.

    If I can pass any of it along, I'm happy, especially since it will all be in print!

    Thank you for letting me help.


    Dave...

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  2. I have some bad news for you Sue, I was saving that lone half pint jar of Walnuts and Honey for your family but today I was in the kitchen and saw it sitting on the cabinet almost empty with only a few pieces of walnuts left in it.

    One of the daughters had gotten it down and almost finished the entire jar, on the plus side we know they will keep for 2+ years and still be good and tasty.

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  3. So...you've got another jar started, eh, Dave? :D

    I'm glad to know it worked to preserve them that way. I'm sure they're irresistible!

    Susan

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