jason holdstock wrote:Hi Angi,
I recently bought a pressure canner, and your book has been in my saved for later list on Amazon for a while.
The reason I have yet to buy it is I do have a recent USDA guide to canning and read about what research they did to get to that point. How does any individual without their history produce new and safe recipes? They are very keen on you sticking to their recipes, so how easily can anyone else deviate from that?
My view on power out canning is not looking at how to do it without power (but I'm sure it would work on top of our multi fuel stove), but make use of the electricity while you have it to prepare complete canned meals that just need reheating, so minimal energy use at that point.
Thank you for being up for questions!!
Great questions Jason! You are correct, the recipes in my book have not been lab tested for safety, HOWEVER, they all follow the safety guidelines put out by the USDA. The USDA has published guidelines for tweaking their recipes. I relied on the USDA Complete Guide to Home Canning (2020), So Easy to Preserve from the University of Georgia (which does most of the testing and publishing for the USDA), The National Center for Home
Food Preservation (which is the USDA website), various USDA bulletins and University booklets, the Ask and Expert website which is run by the Agriculture Extension Office of the USDA, and Ball's website and
books (Ball also does extensive research).
Within safe canning guidelines published by the USDA, there are plenty of approved tweaks that can be made. Most of the recipes in my book are our own tweaks on approved recipes. For instance, canning tomatoes and zucchini is an approved recipes. It's also within the safety guidelines to add dried herbs to any recipe in any amount. So, when I can tomatoes and zucchini, I add a mix of dried rosemary, thyme, basil, garlic, onion, etc. to make Mediterranean Tomatoes and Zucchini.
Some of the recipes are made using the guidelines for canning your own soup recipes. When writing the book, I tried to explain the rules and guidelines to help readers truly understand them instead of being stuck in following an approved recipe instead of having the knowledge to safely tweak the recipe into something their family enjoys.
I hope that makes sense. I'm a stickler for safety and I also think that with knowledge comes confidence - one of the goals for my book is to help people safely can things their family loves. To that end, there are detailed instructions with sources cited in the book, not just recipes for someone to follow.