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  • From: "Tradingpost" <tradingpost@lobo.net>
  • To: livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [Livingontheland] book: By Gardeners and Farmers of Centre Terr, Deborah Madison, Gardeners & Farmers of Terre Vivante
  • Date: Sat, 20 Jun 2009 19:02:47 -0600


Totally great.
paul tradingpost@lobo.net


Preserving Food Without Freezing Or Canning
By Gardeners and Farmers of Centre Terr, Deborah Madison, Gardeners &
Farmers of Terre Vivante

http://books.google.com/books?id=hanf1CdMvbUC&pg=PR14&lpg=PR14&dq=Preserving
+Food+Without+Freezing+or+Canning+recipe&source=bl&ots=BXew38lrGD&sig=DrbmpL
AoPG9ycDLUxSv2ZEf6GmY&hl=en&ei=a7E8SqCLJOmwtger4bH8Dw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct
=result&resnum=4



Review: Preserving Food Without Freezing or Canning
Preserving Food Without Freezing or Canning:
Traditional Techniques Using Salt, Oil, Sugar, Alcohol, Vinegar, Drying,
Cold Storage and Lactic Fermentation
by The Gardeners & Farmers of Terre Vivante
with a new foreward by Deborah Madison
http://handmaidenkitchen.blogspot.com/2008/12/review-preserving-food-without
-freezing.html

I have mentioned this book before and included a recipe, but I wasn't yet
ready to review the book. Here's my review with some recipes just for fun.


If you're interested in putting food by, and concerned that there may be no
electricty in the near future (or are living off-grid, or planning to) BUY
THIS BOOK. The cover says $25 new, but you can get it at Amazon for about
$14 or so. The book is definitely worth the money if you put the techniques
and recipes into practice. I'm sure as hell planning to come harvest time.
In my opinion, freezing and canning have their place and we need to put
those techniques to good use, but ever since I learned about lactic
fermentation, and how that preservation technique makes food alive and
brimming with enzymes and probiotics (not to mention zingy flavor), I've
wanted to learn more traditional methods of preserving food.

The methods presented in this book: preserving in the ground or in a root
cellar, drying, lactic fermentation, oil, vinegar, salt, sugar,
sweet-and-sour preserves, and alcohol are all ancient methods of preserving
food that do not harm the nutritional value of the food. Frankly, I think
freezing and canning does detract from the nutritional value of food, but
not to the extent that we shouldn't use those methods. Rather, augment your
current methods of putting food by with these old/new techniques.

I want to quote a bit from the foreword to the First Edition by Eliot
Coleman:

"In the opening paragraphs of his classic Soil and Civilization, Edward
Hyams decries how modern misapplication of science has caused humans to
'begin working across or against the grain of life.' Hyams notes how
science, when it becomes the master rather than the servant, displaces the
age-old natural wisdom that has maintained the 'integrity of life.' Without
that integrity, humans begin to lose contact with the 'poet,' which Hymas
describes as the instinctive understanding of wholeness that has nurtured
their well-being through the centuries.

Such change is abundantly evident in our modern American diet. The business
of food science is in conflict with the poetry of human nourishment. Store
shelves are filled with products that keep seemingly forever, such as
canned or frozen food, ultra-pasturized dairy products, devitalized flour.
...

Food preservation techniques can be divided into two categories: the modern
sceintific methods that remove the life from food, and the natural "poetic"
methods that maintain or enhance the life in food...

The techniques presented in this book, maintain and enhance the life in the
foods you are preserving, and this is the value of it, and the value of the
book. I hold with many others that one reason Americans suffer so many
degenerative diseases is due to their crappy diet of fast food, overly
processed additives food, canned food, frozen food, all of it with very
little to none nutritional value. You can live on the stuff for a while,
years and decades even, but your body will break down and degenerate into
diseased flesh.

But I'm not here to lecture--buy this book and try these recipes--they are
all interesting and unusual. What the folks who put the book together did
was ask readers of a French organic gardening magazine Les Quatre Saisons
du Jardinage (Four-season Gardening) to send in their favorite methods and
recipes for preserving food. They received over 500 recipes.

The Introduction to the book is very important. It discusses preservation
without nutrient loss, stopping food contamination, choosing a method of
preservation and a note on food safety. Each chapter of the book, each
concerned with a different method of preservation, includes a general
introduction to the method and then the recipes. There are charts,
drawings, and clear descriptions of the methods. The individual recipes,
sent in by the readers of Quatre Saisons du Jardinage, are charming,
unusual, and usually mention the best variety of fruit or vegetable for
their particular recipe. The recipes are attributed to the reader who sent
it in.

Before I get to the recipes, let me say that I really like this book and I
can't wait to try these recipes and techniques. This year I did very little
canning, but I dried vegetables and foraged plants and herbs and fruit, I
fermented quite a few and preserved with vinegar and oil, and we've been
enjoying the results of those methods this winter. Now, I'm ready to try
all the rest and I'm very happy to have this book to guide me. I love the
idea of maintaining as much of the foods' nutritional value as possible,
and enhancing the flavor when possible.






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