Food Storage: Preserving Meat, Dairy, and Eggs (My new book!)

My new book is out!  Dave, of Dave's Kitchen, co-authored it wth me.

 It's called "Food Storage:  Preserving Meat, Dairy, and Eggs"

The kindle version is available now from Amazon and the print book will be out next week. Click on the picture to go look at it:




Here's the 'blurb' about the book:  "There are a lot of books about food preserving but what sets this book apart is that each food and all the methods for preserving that particular food are described in their own chapters. The active Table of Contents allows you to click on a subject and go right to it. The book includes parts I and II:

Part I is an explanation of all the preserving methods, how to do them, and what you’ll need: Canning, Dehydrating, Freezing, Salting, Brining, Sugaring, Smoking, Pickling, and Fermenting, as well as some not-as-often heard of ones as Ash, Oil, and Honey for preservation.

Part II starts with meat and works it’s way through beef/venison/elk, pork/bear, goat/sheep, rabbit, chicken, turkey, duck/goose, and fish; then dairy: milk, butter, cheeses, yogurt and sour cream, and finishes with a chapter on preserving eggs. All the methods that work well with each food are explained along with directions for the preparation and processing of that food. There is also information about what doesn’t work and why."

This is a good book for preppers to keep on hand.  If the SHTF, you'll have directions for preserving food without modern equipment, although the modern stuff is in the book too.

The "Look Inside" sneak-peek looks terrible on the Amazon website, but it looks okay on a kindle. 

Dave's Kitchen - Dried Cranberries

 

Dried Cranberries

To dehydrate cranberries they have to be cut or they will just cook and swell up before they dry. I had sliced each berry in half with a knife to fill the first 5 gallon bucket but I got smart and chopped them in a food processor for the second. The picture attached was with the berries ran through the food processor. It really sped up the process.
 

They can be used pretty much the same way as you would use fresh, just soak them in water first. To make cranberry sauce, just put them in a pot of boiling water with sugar and they will cook up great. They have a high pectin content and will form a thick sauce when they cool, just like a fruit jelly. They also make a good tea, just pour boiling water on some in a cup and let it sit for a while and drink hot or add ice and drink it cold - add some sugar if you like.

 

I add them to sweet potatoes when baking them with brown sugar(candied sweet potatoes), add them to the dish dry and they will soak up liquid as they cook. They also go good in pumpkin or sweet potato bread, add them dry and they cook up fine. If you add fresh berries to the batter they will be soft and mushy in the loaf but added dry they do well.

 

My daughter brought in 4 more bags of fresh cranberries yesterday that I haven't done anything with yet. I'm going to slice them and soak them in sugar before I dry them and see what they come out like. That may make a good snack item(if we're lucky), nothing like experimenting to learn something new, huh?