Food Storage: Preserving Meat, Dairy, and Eggs

Good info
I have read this book from cover to cover. I have also read other books on canning as well as information from the extension service in NM and AK. I felt this was a good investment on preserving food. Good enough that I recommended it to my mom and she purchased it also. Food preservation is getting to be a controversial thing as it can be dangerous if not done right. But so can walking across the street. I read the one star review and disagreed with it in it’s entirety. There were a few instances that the author stated, “I have not done this but this is my understanding of how it could be accomplished” paraphrasing of course. This is much better than just pretending that you did it.It was also mentioned that some of these techniques were not approved as safe by the extension service for dairy products. That does not mean they are not safe but they are not approved. Perhaps a disclaimer would be in order but you should be double checking anything you read anyway. I feel a lot better about trying it from someone that is living the style and has photos of finished product than someone that copies a bunch of recipes and says they are a book.So in my opinion and it is not so humble I felt the author did a great job of documenting a number of ways in which you can safely preserve food and from first hand experience. It is up to you on if you want to do it or not. For me, I will can butter, cheese, sausage and scrambled eggs in pint jars. When our power goes out for a month and everyone else is having beans for breakfast I will be sitting pretty. :~)I do not know these authors, I have not met them not have I eaten any of their food, but I would sure like to someday.

Good grade, small crit.
Let me start by saying that I will keep this book in a safe place. It is a treasure trove of ideas I would want as reference after a long term disaster. If I were building a survival kitchen from scratch, this would be on the book shelf over the wood stove. It has invaluable information, give specific details on ingredients, options, weights, times and pressures (which several “Food preservation” books don’t). The book lists common as well as the usual foods, and tells of failures as well as the successes (We learn more from our failures than our successes.); bravo!Granted that most English professors don’t can bear meat, these authors would do well to pay an experienced editor before they release book two. I found ten typos in the first seventy pages and two clear misspellings. The style is annoyingly inconsistent and slips from folksy to formal and back constantly. I think that the number of places where the text reads, “I’ve heard of this but I’ve never tried it.” belongs in an addendum at the end of the book titled, “Rumors worth researching” or “Currently being researched: see book two”. I think this lack of editing gives an unjustified feel of, “I will just dash this off” to a piece of work that obviously represents a lot of work and a lifetime of personal experience. It deserves to make a better impression. I like the book, I will give it a five for content, but it could use a cleaned-up behind the ears.

Interesting book, some problems
This was an interesting and brave little book, in part because it attempts to cover foods that aren’t exactly commonly preserved anymore, along with a wide variety of preservation methods for those foods. I admire this. I’m not altogether sold on the presentation, however.Covered in the first section are overviews of: canning, dehydrating, freezing, salting, sugaring, smoking, fermenting, and using ash, oil, and honey. The second section handles the actual foods, with multiple preserving techniques for each. Foods covered: a variety of meats and game, dairy products, and eggs.I like the overall organization of this book, because tackling each product with multiple preservation methods to each makes it easy to find and easier to choose what you will do. The specific topics were anything but organized. The vital information was interspersed with stories, experiments, failures. I enjoyed reading about the experiences, both successes and failures, but wish they’d been somehow presented separately. I also really enjoyed the variety of ideas and techniques presented. I want more of this.That said, I have some concerns after reading it. Preserving meat, dairy, and eggs correctly takes expertise and a respect for possible poor outcomes like botulism. I feel the authors are familiar with most of the subject matter but I also got the distinct impression that some was just guesswork. That isn’t a terrible quality in many areas, but in food preparation and preservation, safety is pretty important. When it comes to what I preserve and feed my family, I want an expert and a voice of authority.Also of note, this appears to have been self-published. I have no trouble with that, but it is sorely in need of an editor to tighten it all up, or at minimum a thorough proofreading. Even a spellcheck would be lovely! It seems to have been published as an e-book and then just printed up without any changes (for instance, on the back cover the consumer is instructed to click on the active table of contents to be taken directly to it, and elsewhere are lengthy website links that would be formidable to type in). Misspelled words and bad punctuation are found on virtually every single page. The length of text on the back cover is all caps and not the easiest to read. Inside, quotation marks or random periods just randomly pop up. Multiple fonts are used throughout. I assume this is to separate the “voices” of the different contributors, but it really comes across very jumbled. The book’s overall voice bounces around quite a bit, with lots of anecdotal information where straightforward textbook instructions would be best. I find this very confusing and difficult to follow.This book fills a niche for me, though, and as such it will remain in the reference section on my library shelves. There isn’t much easily-accessible information on, say, canning butter or successfully dehydrating cheese out there. My wish is that this book gets a professional makeover. It would be a worthwhile investment, I believe. I recommend it, albeit haltingly, and really only to people experienced enough in food preservation to be able to navigate through the wordiness and unorganized presentation and apply sound science to their own food storing.

Looks interesting

excellent information